THE streets of Harare exploded in jubilations and celebrations on Tuesday following the announcement of the resignation of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe for almost four decades. He is the only president that the country’s population has known for over 37 years of independence. He was the world’s oldest president at 93.
For a week, he had clung to power after the country’s military Generals moved against him following his sack of Emmerson Mnangagwa, his erstwhile deputy. The decision to sack Mnangagwa marked a break with his major support base, the war veterans and the military leaders who participated in the liberation war. The drama lasted for a week, culminating in his resignation that marks a major turning point in the history of Zimbabwe. It has echoed across the continent where a number of rulers, gripped by the lure of power in perpetuity, now confront the possibility of their edifice crumbling in like manner. It will be recalled that in a speech before the African Union in 2016, Mugabe had vowed to remain at the helm “until God says: Come.”
Mugabe was born on 21 February, 1924 as the son of an absentee father in the rural area around Kutama. He attended the Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, an institution in South Africa that became an incubator for some of the continent’s most fabled nationalist leaders, including Nelson Mandela. He worked as a school teacher in Ghana between 1956 and 1960, when he returned to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe’s former name). In 1965, as part of the wave of independence that swept through Africa, Ian Douglas Smith declared independence from Britain with a white minority rule in Rhodesia. Mugabe and many others would not stomach independence under white rule. In 1963, he helped the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) as a breakaway from Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). He was convicted of sedition and imprisoned in 1964. While still in prison, he led a group to depose Sithole as ZANU’s leader in 1974. His only child died in Ghana while he was in detention. The white authorities did not allow him to attend the funeral. On release from prison, he fled to Mozambique.
From Mozambique, Mugabe led ZANU in a protracted struggle against white minority rule. He was joint leader, with Joshua Nkomo, of the Patriotic Front (PF) of Zimbabwe during the Civil War of 1975-1979. He participated in the Lancaster House negotiations that led to the agreement that resulted in the dismantling of white minority rule. He led ZANU-P
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