Mugabe, Robert Gabriel 1928—

Robert Gabriel Mugabe 1928—

President of the Republic of Zimbabwe

At a Glance…

Life’s Destiny Set

Landed in Prison

Independence

Sources

Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, is a man who focused on his life’s work early. While in his twenties he decided to help less courageous black countrymen achieve independence from British colonial rule. He fulfilled his personal goal in 1980, after 11 years in prison and a bloody seven-year guerrilla war. Today Mugabe presides over a land whose economy is fueled by mining, agriculture, and tourism, though high unemployment and lack of education are chronic problems.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born in 1924, four months after Southern Rhodesia became a British crown colony. In a land ruled by a theoretically multiracial Legislative Assembly that was actually overwhelmingly white, life was not easy for the Shona people of Mugabe’s native Kutama village. Their freedom was curtailed by pass laws, their job opportunities were regulated by industry’s need for unskilled labor, and their education, in most cases, was limited to the grammar-school level.

Robert Mugabe was one of the few who escaped this fate. His education was supervised by the director of the nearby Jesuit mission, an unshakably moral and defiantly liberal man. An unabashed iconoclast, Father O’Hea held the philosophy that all people are equal and should be treated that way and that students should be educated as far as their capabilities can take them. He imbued the intelligent young Robert with both of these maxims and encouraged him to pass them on to others by becoming a teacher.

In 1945 Mugabe left O’Hea’s guidance behind for a wider Southern Rhodesia, where new settlers were pouring into country at the rate of 10,000 each year. Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins, intent upon providing security for them, was firmly in favor of racial separation, a method of administration that had been buttressed by the Land Apportionment Act. Implemented in 1930, the act decreed that much of the nation’s unincorporated land should be divided evenly between blacks and whites despite a huge demographic imbalance of only 50,000 whites and 650,000 blacks. At first the division was merely inconvenient, but the growing population and the increasing industrialization of the country forced more and more blacks to move. By the time Robert Mugabe came home to start his teaching career in 1946, about 300,000 black families had been displaced

At a Glance…

Born February 21, 1924, in Kutama, Zimbabwe;son of Gabriel and Bona Mugabe; married Sally Heyfron February 21, 1961; two children. Education: Attended Kutama Mission School; University of Fort Hare, South Africa, B.A., 1951; received L.L.B. from University of London.

Taught at various mission schools in Zimbabwe, 1951–55; taught at Chalimbana Training College, Zambia, 1955–58, and St. Mary’s Training College, Takoradi, Ghana, 1958–60; National Democratic Party, publicity secretary, 1960–61; Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), publicity secretary, 1961–62; Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), founder and leader, 1963–76, president, 1976–80; arrested in 1963 and jailed 1964–74; Republic of Zimbabwe, prime minister, 1980–87, minister of defense, 1985; president, 1987—.

Awards: African Leadership Prize, 1988.

Addresses: Office–Office of the President, Private Bag 7700, Causeway, Harare, Zimbabwe.

from their homes and packed into already overcrowded areas. It was a situation destined to fester into open warfare.

Southern Rhodesia was still seething in 1949, when Mugabe won a scholarship to Fort Hare University in South Africa. Because South Africa was also part of the British Commonwealth he found little change in the external society, though life was different inside the all-black university. For the first time since he had left the mission, he saw active protest against segregation and an eagerness to explore different political philosophies. One which he found attractive was Marxism.

Life’s Destiny Set

Mugabe’s interest in communism grew into admiration after 1957, when he was invited by Kwame Nkrumah to come and teach in Ghana. Recently independent, proudly Marxist, the government was intent on bringing universal education and opportunity to those formerly at the lowest levels of society. Mugabe noted that most Ghanaians gladly seized the chance to better themselves. Enjoying the cheerful public spirit, he plunged eagerly into teaching and working with the country’s youth groups, and took a deep interest in all aspects of Ghanaian politics.

In 1960 he visited his homeland in order to introduce his mother to his Ghanaian fiancee, Sally Heyfron. The country was no longer the Southern Rhodesia he remembered. The white population had grown to 223,000, a formidable number of whom supported the federation that had been established between Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Malawi. But no such enthusiasm existed among the country’s 450,000-strong black voting force. The federation’s government did plan to institute majority rule, so politically aware blacks were adamantly opposed to it. Mugabe was astounded by their bold new vehemence and the protest groups they had formed to express it.

In July of 1960 black fury exploded into a March of 7,000 people who gathered at the town hall of Salisbury’s Harare Township to protest the arrest of their leaders. Mugabe was persuaded to address the gathering. He told his seething audience about the egalitarian new Ghanaian society and its rise from colonialism, and found that he had generated public interest that outlasted the day of the protest. He ignored the threatening, almost unlimited police power of the Law and Order Act that was enacted after the march and began to give many speeches about the Ghanaian pride in its Marxist independence. He also decided to stay and help to achieve the same status for Southern Rhodesia.

Within weeks of the March of 7,000 he was elected publicity secretary of the National Democratic Party. Seeing his first task as introducing the uninitiated to the possibility of black independence, he organized a semi-militant youth league like those he had worked with in Ghana. Just as he had done in Accra, he attracted Rhodesian teenagers with political discussions and the cultural dancing and music that would give them pride in their heritage. His efforts soon paid off. Although the party itself was banned by the government on December 9, 1961, it left behind enough supporters to regroup immediately into the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). Southern Rhodesia’s first effective black political movement, it functioned for nine months before it was banned the following September.

The tumultuous events in Southern Rhodesia had not escaped the notice of the British Foreign Office, which in 1959 ordered a comprehensive enquiry under Lord Monckton. The following year the Monckton Commission disclosed its conclusion that there was too much black opposition to the federation for it to continue to exist in its present form. If the federation were to survive, Monckton concluded, a new constitution providing majority rule would have to be enacted. Britain agreed, relinquishing control of Southern Rhodesia’s domestic affairs and drawing up a new constitution allowing majority rule.

But the new constitution did not appease black Rhodesians. It lacked a definite target date for adopting majority rule and it proposed a two-tier electoral system whose upper level was accessible only to voters with a secondary education. Since this effectively excluded most of the black population, blacks received only half the voting power of the better-educated whites, who were also eligible to vote on the lower roll. As a result, the country’s far-smaller white population could elect 50 of the Legislative Assembly’s 65 members. The vociferous opposition of 450,000 blacks spurred ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo to visit the United Nations, which in turn called upon Britain to suspend the new constitution and initiate discussions about true majority rule.

Landed in Prison

Nkomo’s negotiations with the British stalled. Nkomo was perceived by many, including Mugabe, as accepting Britain’s vague promises of eventual majority rule rather than insisting on a definite timetable. Along with other ZAPU supporters, Mugabe was so furious about these equivocations that he openly began to advocate a guerrilla war. In April of 1961, noted Mugabe’s biographers David Smith and Colin Simpson, Mugabe even snapped at a policeman at Salisbury Airport who stopped a Party supporter suspected of carrying a weapon: “We are taking over this country, and we will not put up with this nonsense.”

Mugabe’s defiant attitude made him the target of constant police surveillance, especially after he split from Nkomo’s party in 1963. In August of that year he and several other ex-Nkomo supporters formed the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Rhodesian police, aware of these activities, waited for their opportunity to arrest him. Their chance came in December, when Mugabe returned to his homeland. He was jailed for 11 years. In prison Mugabe was not as isolated as the police hoped. Secret communications networks between him and his supporters brought him the news that the former Nyasa-land was now Malawi, that the former Northern Rhodesia was now Zambia, and that the independence of both countries had caused the collapse of the Federation. He also knew that an attack on a white Rhodesian farmstead in 1964 had signaled the start of guerrilla operations to liberate Southern Rhodesia.

Mugabe had been in prison for about two years when ex-Royal Air Force Pilot Ian Smith became Rhodesia’s prime minister. An experienced politician, Smith assured white Southern Rhodesians that majority rule would not come to pass during his tenure. He went to London for the constitutional talks, but his stance did not impress the new Labor government. Nevertheless he stuck obstinately to his agenda, going so far as to issue a unilateral declaration of independence on November 11, 1965, though still professing allegiance to the British crown. In response, the United Nations imposed sanctions that quickly damaged the Rhodesian economy. Chrome, copper, asbestos, tobacco and sugar previously bound for export never left the country, while shipments of badly needed oil were kept out.

However, sanctions were just one of Smith’s problems. Far worse was the 1975 independence of Mozambique, a staunch former ally in its days as a Portuguese colony. Mozambique was now a Marxist state, with long, sparsely patrolled borders that were ideal bases of operations for Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), and the Chinese allies eager to help them with training and arms. Neighboring South Africa, Smith’s last remaining ally, was now also teetering insecurely. Encouraged by South African leaders, Smith allowed Mugabe out of prison to attend a 1974 conference in Lusaka. Mugabe seized this opportunity and escaped across the border into Mozambique, stopping on the way to recruit young Rhodesians for guerrilla training.

Independence

By the end of the 1970s a savage and stealthy war and a devastated economy had convinced Smith that majority rule was inevitable. Unsuccessfully he tried to reach a mutually suitable transition schedule with Mugabe, but there was no progress until 1979, when Britain convened a conference at Lancaster House in London. Topics discussed at the conference were the British-monitored transition to black majority rule, assurance of white minority representation for a specific period after independence, and a new constitution. With all these matters settled, on December 16 the United Nations lifted the sanctions.

On April 18, 1980, British rule ended in Southern Rhodesia and the nation was renamed the Republic of Zimbabwe. Elected over candidates from ten competing parties, including Nkomo, the Zimbabwe African National Union took power, with Robert Gabriel Mugabe as prime minister. Despite his Marxist leanings, he tried his best not to frighten the technologically advanced whites by immediately scrapping the capitalist economy. Instead, he tried to persuade them to stay and share their skills by announcing that the change to socialism would proceed in gradual phases. But white Rhodesians were not convinced that they could find security in a country run by a recently murderous enemy. In 1980 alone, 17,240 of them emigrated.

Mugabe ignored their departure and turned his attention to badly needed reforms. By New Year’s Day 1981, the country boasted free primary school education for all students as well as guaranteed admission to secondary school for all who qualified. Free medical care was provided for those with low income levels, and a new housing law granted freehold ownership to home-renters of 30 years’ standing. In other innovations, Mugabe had city boundaries reshaped to ensure multiracial political representation and replaced whites with educated blacks in key positions relating to educational institutions.

But problems remained. Fighting broke out in February 1981 between Mugabe’s forces and Joshua Nkomo’s Zambia-based faction. Most troublesome was Nkomo himself, who was fired from the government in 1982 after his intention to launch an anti-government coup was revealed. This action touched off a flurry of robberies and caused the murder of several tourists. It also brought retaliation from Mugabe’s forces in the form of rapes and murders in Nkomo’s stronghold area of Matabeleland.

An atmosphere of resentment smoldered on through the national elections of 1985, when Mugabe triumphed a second time over Nkomo. Friction between ZANU and Nkomo’s ZAPU supporters continued until November of 1987, when 15 Matabeleland missionaries were murdered with axes by Mugabe supporters. This tragedy caused Nkomo and Mugabe to settle their differences. On December 22,1987, ZANU and ZAPU merged in a unity agreement designed to begin healing the country, which was now split along tribal lines. One week later Mugabe was installed as the country’s new president, while Nkomo was named one of three supervising senior ministers.

The friction eased, allowing President Mugabe to concentrate on bettering an economy starved for foreign currency as a result of prolonged drought, a worldwide recession, and the lingering effects of sanctions against the Smith government. Despite his efforts, imported spare parts for the mining and manufacturing industries became very scarce, and levies on tobacco and alcohol had to be instituted to offset the soaring unemployment rate.

By 1989 the economy required major restructuring. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank helped to create a five-year adjustment program that restructured the government, relaxed price controls, and gave farmers the right to set their own prices. Still, shortages of staples like brake fluid and cooking oil, the drought-induced rises in the cost of maize, wheat, and dairy products, and a new policy of charging for education and medical care overshadowed most of the adjustment programs’s benefits and darkened the national mood. By 1994, however, the structural adjustment had produced some improvements, with slight growth beginning in agriculture, manufacturing, and mining. Mugabe’s vision of security under majority rule in Zimbabwe had begun to move forward.

Sources

Books

Legum, Colin, editor, Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents, 1980–1981, p. B922.

Nelson, Harold, editor, Zimbabwe: A Country Study, American University, 1983.

Rasmussen, R. Kent, Historical Dictionary of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, African Historical Dictionaries, No. 18, Scarecrow Press, 1979.

Smith, David, and Colin Simpson, Mugabe, Sphere Books, 1981.

Periodicals

Africa Report, May-June 1981, p. 62; January-February 1985, p. 61; March-April 1988, p. 66; July-August 1988, p. 41; May-June 1989, p. 41; January-February 1990, p. 36; November-December 1991, p. 56; July-August 1993, p. 64; July-August 1993, p. 66.

Economist, February 15,1992, p. 47; June 13,1992, p. 46.

New Republic, January 31, 1983, p. 18.

New Statesman, June 5, 992, p. 26.

New York Times, February 20, 1980, p. 7; April 18, 1980, p. 1; February 14, 1980, p. 4; July 7, 1985, p. 1, Sec. 4, p. 3. January 28, 1992, p. 17; August 22, 1993, p. 5.

Time, March 17, 1980, p. 43.

—Gillian Wolf