About Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe ( muu-GAH-bee, Shona: [muɡaɓe]; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who led Zimbabwe from 1980 until 2017. He served as the country's first Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987 and as its second President from 1987 to 2017. He also led the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and then its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and from the 1990s as a socialist. Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a schoolteacher. Angered by white minority rule of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an independent state controlled by the black majority. After making antigovernmental comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly participated in peace talks in the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement, ending the war. In the 1980 general election, Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory, becoming prime minister when the country, now renamed Zimbabwe, gained internationally recognised independence later that year. Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed desire for a socialist society—adhered largely to mainstream economic policies. Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also deteriorated. In the Gukurahundi of 1982–1987, Mugabe's 5th Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland in a campaign that killed at least 20,000 people. Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (1986–1989), the Organisation of African Unity (1997–1998), and the African Union (2015–2016). Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks; from 2000 he encouraged black Zimbabweans to violently seize white-owned farms. Food production was severely impacted, leading to famine, hyperinflation, economic decline, and foreign sanctions. Opposition to Mugabe grew, but he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. In 2017, members of his party ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mugabe died in Singapore two years later. Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe was a controversial figure. He was praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped free Zimbabwe from British colonialism, imperialism, and white minority rule. Critics accused Mugabe of being a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement and widespread corruption and human rights abuses, including anti-white racism, crimes against humanity, and genocide. In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa's Eastern Cape.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.