REMEMBERING PRESIDENT CDE ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE

THE TRUE AFRICAN

By Dr Masimba Mavaza

The leader of Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980, Robert Mugabe (1924-2019) was one of the longest-serving and, in the latter years of his reign, most loved African rulers. President Mugabe trained as a teacher. He taught in several schools and pursued his teaching profession which took him to Ghana where he the ever loved First lady. Sally Mugabe. He then spent 11 years as a political prisoner under Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government. He left Zimbabwe in a London bread lorry packed under dozens of bread. The lorry was being driven by a big bellied driver called Moven Mahachi who later became the minister of defence in Mugabe’s government. Mahachi died in an accident in Nyanga. President Mugabe went into Mozambique through Nyanga ironically and was assisted by cde sekuru Rekai Tangwena slip into Mozambique. He was to lead the Zimbabwe African National Union movement and was one of the key negotiators in the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, which led to the creation of a fully democratic Zimbabwe.

Mugabe became the first Elected prime minister and later president, he embraced conciliation with the country’s white minority and trued to build a unity of purpose with other comrades.
Mugabe was the third Prime Minister of the land. The first was Ian Smith that time Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia. The second was Bishop Abel Muzorewa the country was now called Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

He then became the president becoming the second President of the land. The first President was President Josiah Gumede in 1979. The country was called Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The second was President Canaan Sodindo Banana from 1980 and Mugabe being the third President.
Mugabe oversaw the land distribution program which was meant to strengthen the black person’s wealth. Beginning in 2000, he encouraged the takeovers of our land from the commercial farmers leading to economic sanctions by the West.
With a lot of pressure from the West cde Mugabe agreed to a power sharing deal with the opposition. He later called it a disastrous period. Some power was being shared with the rival Movement for Democratic Change. Before his resignation in 2017, he ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years. 
President Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born February 21, 1924, in Kutama, a Jesuit mission station 50 miles west of the Southern Rhodesian capital now called Zvimba. His father, Gabriel Matibiri, was a carpenter from Nyasaland (later Malawi). His mother, Bona, belonged to the prominent Shona ethnic group.
Originally known as Southern Rhodesia and later as Zimbabwe Rhodesia, Zimbabwe was renamed upon gaining independence from Britain in 1980. The name comes from a Shona term for the kingdom that controlled the area between 1220 and 1450.
Mugabe graduated from Katuma’s St. Francis Xavier College in 1945. For the next 15 years he taught in Rhodesia and Ghana and pursued further education at Fort Hare University in South Africa. In Ghana he met and married his first wife, Sally Hayfron.
In 1960 Mugabe joined the pro-independence National Democratic Party, becoming its publicity secretary. In 1961 the NDP was banned and reformed as the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). Two years later Mugabe left ZAPU for the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU, later ZANU-PF), his political home till his death.
In 1964 ZANU was banned by Rhodesia’s colonial government and Mugabe was imprisoned. A year later, premier Ian Smith issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence to create the white-ruled state of Rhodesia, short-circuiting Britain’s plans for majority rule and triggering international condemnation.
In prison Mugabe taught English to his fellow prisoners and earned multiple graduate degrees by correspondence from the University of London. In 1974, Mugabe went into exile in Zambia and Mozambique, and in 1977 he gained full control of ZANU’s political and military fronts. He adopted Marxist and Maoist views and received arms and training from Asia and Eastern Europe, but he still maintained good relations with Western donors.
A 1978 accord between Smith’s government and moderate black leaders paved the way for the election of Bishop Abel Muzorewa as prime minister of the state known as Zimbabwe Rhodesia, but it lacked international recognition because ZANU and ZAPU had not participated. In 1979 the British-brokered Lancaster House Agreement brought the major parties together to agree to majority rule while protecting the rights and property of the white minority. After winning new elections on March 4, 1980, Mugabe worked to convince the new country’s 200,000 whites, including 4,500 commercial farmers, to stay. He offered a reconciliatory hand to all enemies.
In 1982 ZIPRA forces rebelled against ZANU PF. It all started at Entumbane barracks. During lunch Zipra forces were given guns and sprayed bullets to the none suspecting ZANLA forces. The rebel spread in all towns and Matabeleland Rural areas. Any person who could not speak Shona had his tongue cut off. Hundreds Shona were killed and thousands displaced. Mugabe assembled a fifth brigade after the police failed to deal with the dissident problem.
President Mugabe sent his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to the ZAPU stronghold of Matabeleland to smash the Civil War. Over five years, many civilians were killed in the Skirmishes. In 1987 Mugabe used his good heart and invited ZAPU to peace talks. Then ZAPU was to be merged with the ruling ZANU-PF and creating a peaceful state with him as the ruling president.
During the 1990s Mugabe was reelected twice. In the same period he lost his wife Sally Mugabe, he then became a widower and only remarried to Grace Mugabe the elegant First Lady. In 1998 President Mugabe extended his statesmanship by sending Zimbabwean troops to intervene in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil war—a move which stopped the spread of neo colonialism.

In 2000 Mugabe organized a referendum on a new Zimbabwean constitution that would expand the powers of the presidency and allow the government to seize white-owned land. He tested defeat for the first time when people voted against him. Groups supported by the West and opposed to the constitution formed the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which successfully campaigned for a “no” vote in the referendum.
That same year, Zimbabweans led by the war veterans began invading white-owned farms. This caused many of Zimbabwe’s whites to flee the country in protest. Zimbabwe’s commercial farming collapsed, triggering years of hyperinflation and food shortages that created a nation of impoverished billionaires. All this was a well calculated measure by the West.
After a 2008 election where ZANU-PF-lost the majority but not the vote Mugabe was pressured by his regional allies to form an inclusive government with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai as vice president.
However Tsvangirai was made the Prime minister making Tsvangirai the Fourth Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
In 2017, he resigned after lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against him. His successor was the current President cde Dr Emmerson Mnangagwa, a longtime ally of Mugabe and a renowned constitutionalist and a lawyer.
Sadly away from home On September 6, 2019, he died at the age of 95. 

Cde Mugabe will always be missed.