Robert Mugabe spoke eloquently as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Elect in March 1980. He offered a message of hope and unity to a population ravaged by years of war. He spoke of creating a government “capable of achieving peace and stability … and progress.”
In the first years of independence, some of this vision was realised. But in the ensuing decades peace, stability and progress have waned. Mugabe has been in power for 36 years. The country’s political environment is unstable at best. Its economy is in ruin. There is no clear succession plan.
Mugabe’s presidency has been characterised by mismanagement, corruption, and control over dissent and debate. Outsiders might not understand how someone who led his country’s downfall from breadbasket to basket case has remained in the presidency for so many years.
So who is Robert Mugabe and how has he held onto power for so long?
Growing up under colonial rule made a large impact on a young Mugabe. Colonialism in what was then Rhodesia started in 1889 when the Crown granted the British South Africa Company a Royal Charter that gave rights to the land which later became Northern (Zambia) and Southern (Zimbabwe) Rhodesia.
The charter gave the British South Africa Company the power to expropriate land and encourage British settlement to exploit the territory’s resources. It declared Southern Rhodesia a colony in 1896, prompting the First Chimurenga, which saw the Shona and Ndebele defeated.
The British South Africa Company introduced commercial agricultural development after discovering that the colony was not rich in gold. Commercial farming was dependent on the expropriation of land from the rural population. So in 1898 it encouraged expropriation for commercial agricultural production of tobacco, maize, and corn. It also set up a reserve system which aimed to move and concentrate Shona and Ndebele populations into so-called native reserve lands.
This set the stage for Mugabe’s childhood and the ideology behind the Second Chimurenga, in addition to much of Zimbabwe’s current inequality.
Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924 in Kutama a few months after Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British Crown colony.
Unlike most of his compatriots who received a grammar school education at best, Mugabe was lucky enough to receive a very good education. The young boy’s intelligence made him stand out amongst his peers, and he was offered a place to study at the elite St. Francis Xavier Kutama College. Mugabe went on to qualify as a teacher at Kutuma College.
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