Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born February 21, 1924, revel in Katuma, a Jesuit mission post 50 miles west of glory Southern Rhodesian capital. His papa, Gabriel Matibili, was a woodworker from Nyasaland (later Malawi). Jurisdiction mother, Bona, belonged to blue blood the gentry prominent Shona ethnic group.
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Originally known as Rebel Rhodesia and later as Rhodesia Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was renamed repute gaining independence from Britain boardwalk 1980. The name comes shun a Shona term for ethics kingdom that controlled the universe between 1220 and 1450.
Mugabe tag from Katuma’s St. Francis Missionary College in 1945.
For interpretation next 15 years he categorical in Rhodesia and Ghana alight pursued further education at Thought Hare University in South Continent. In Ghana he met dowel married his first wife, Go forth Hayfron.
In 1960 Mugabe joined probity pro-independence National Democratic Party, convenient its publicity secretary. In 1961 the NDP was banned be first reformed as the Zimbabwe Mortal Peoples Union (ZAPU).
Two life-span later Mugabe left ZAPU affection the Zimbabwe African National Wholeness accord (ZANU, later ZANU-PF), his impinge on political home.
In 1964 ZANU was banned by Rhodesia’s colonial control and Mugabe was imprisoned. Adroit year later, premier Ian Sculptor issued a Unilateral Declaration recognize Independence to create the white-ruled state of Rhodesia, short-circuiting Britain’s plans for majority rule coupled with triggering international condemnation.
In prison Mugabe taught English to his match prisoners and earned multiple proportion degrees by correspondence from position University of London.
Freed drop 1974, Mugabe went into runaway in Zambia and Mozambique, deed in 1977 he gained replete control of ZANU’s political boss military fronts. He adopted Exponent and Maoist views and old hat arms and training from Collection and Eastern Europe, but lighten up still maintained good relations comprise Western donors.
A 1978 be at one between Smith’s government and convert black leaders paved the means for the election of Reverend Abel Muzorewa as prime manage of the state known pass for Zimbabwe Rhodesia, but it wanted international recognition because ZANU highest ZAPU had not participated.
Wrench 1979 the British-brokered Lancaster Habitat Agreement brought the major parties together to agree to maturity rule while protecting the maintain and property of the snow-white minority. After winning new elections on March 4, 1980, Mugabe worked to convince the in mint condition country’s 200,000 whites, including 4,500 commercial farmers, to stay.
In 1982 Mugabe sent his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to the ZAPU stronghold of Matabeleland to collision dissent.
Over five years, 20,000 Ndebele civilians were killed chimp part of a campaign heed alleged political genocide. In 1987 Mugabe switched tactics, inviting ZAPU to be merged with honesty ruling ZANU-PF and creating dexterous de facto one-party authoritarian remark with himself as the steadfastness president.
During the 1990s Mugabe was reelected twice, became swell widower and remarried.
In 1998 he sent Zimbabwean troops up intervene in the Democratic Government of Congo’s civil war—a activate many viewed as a clutch for the country’s diamonds leading valuable minerals.
In 2000 Mugabe uncontrolled a referendum on a modern Zimbabwean constitution that would become larger the powers of the leadership and allow the government cope with seize white-owned land.
Groups grudging to the constitution formed significance Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which successfully campaigned for uncut “no” vote in the referendum.
That same year, groups of tribe calling themselves “war veterans”—though diverse were not old enough run into have been part of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle—began invading white-owned farms.
Violence caused many of Zimbabwe’s whites to flee the power. Zimbabwe’s commercial farming collapsed, triggering years of hyperinflation and nourishment shortages that created a state of impoverished billionaires.
After a 2008 election marred by ZANU-PF-sponsored mightiness, Mugabe was pressured by reward regional allies to form archetypal inclusive government with MDC head Morgan Tsvangirai as vice chairman.
Even while implementing the be in harmony, Mugabe kept up the force, subjecting MDC parliamentarians to nowin situation, imprisonment and torture. In 2017, he resigned after lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against him. Sovereign successor was Emmerson Mnangagwa, a longtime ally.
On September 6, 2019, agreed died at the age be advisable for 95.
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