Robert Mugabe rose to prominence in the 1960s as the
Secretary General of
ZANU during the conflict against the conservative white minority government of
Rhodesia. Mugabe was a political prisoner in Rhodesia for more than 10 years between 1964 and 1974.
Upon release Mugabe, along with
Edgar Tekere, left Rhodesia in 1975 to re-join the fight during the
Rhodesian Bush War from bases in
Mozambique.
At the end of the war in 1979, Mugabe emerged as a hero in the minds of many Africans.
He won the
general elections of 1980
after calling for reconciliation between the former belligerents,
including white Zimbabweans and rival political parties, and thereby
became Prime Minister on Zimbabwe's independence in April 1980.
In August 2008, Robert Mugabe suffered a narrow defeat in the first
round of a presidential election but he subsequently won the run-off
election
in a landslide after opposition rival Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from
the race, and extended a hand to the opposition with the signing of a
power-sharing deal with opposition leaders
Morgan Tsvangirai and
Arthur Mutambara of the
MDC-T and
MDC-M opposition party.
On 3 August 2013, the Zimbabwe Election Commission said Mugabe won
his seventh term as President, defeating Tsvangirai with 61 percent of
the vote.
After a campaign marked by intimidation from all sides, mistrust from
security forces and reports of full ballot boxes found on the road, the
Shona
majority was decisive in electing Mugabe to head the first government
as prime minister on 4 March 1980. ZANU won 57 out of 80 Common Roll
seats in the new parliament, with the 20 white seats all going to the
Rhodesian Front.
Mugabe, whose political support came from his
Shona-speaking
homeland in the north, attempted to build Zimbabwe on a basis of an
uneasy coalition with his ZAPU rivals, whose support came from the
Ndebele-speaking
south, and with the white minority. Mugabe sought to incorporate ZAPU
into his ZANU led government and ZAPU's military wing into the army.
ZAPU's leader, Joshua Nkomo, was given a series of cabinet positions in
Mugabe's government. However, Mugabe was torn between this objective and
pressures to meet the expectations of his own ZANU followers for a
faster pace of social change.
In 1983, Mugabe fired Nkomo from his cabinet, triggering bitter fighting between ZAPU supporters in the
Ndebele-speaking region of the country and the ruling ZANU. Mugabe accused the
Ndebele tribe of plotting to overthrow him after sacking Nkomo. Between 1982 and 1985, the military
crushed armed resistance from
Ndebele groups in the provinces of
Matabeleland and the
Midlands, leaving Mugabe's rule secure. Mugabe has been accused by the BBC's
Panorama
programme of committing mass murder during this period of his rule,
after the show investigated claims made by political activist Gary Jones
that Mugabe had been instrumental in removing him and his family from
his farmland.
A peace accord was negotiated in 1987.
ZAPU merged into the
Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) on 22 December 1988.
Mugabe brought Nkomo into the government once again as a vice-president.
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