Robert Mugabe, who has died aged 95, used repression and fear to hold on to power in Zimbabwe for 37 years until he was finally ousted when his previously loyal military generals turned against him.
In office, he initially won international plaudits for his declared policy of racial reconciliation and for extending improved education and health services to the black majority.Mugabe had taken control of one wing in the guerrilla war for independence — the Zimbabwe African National Union and its armed forces — after his release from prison in 1974.
Yet it was the violent seizure of white-owned farms nearly two decades later that would complete Mugabe’s transformation into an international pariah — though his status as a liberation hero still resonates strongly in most of Africa. “Mugabe wasn’t human at all,” Carrington told biographer Heidi Holland. “There was a sort of reptilian quality about him.In the final decades of his rule, Mugabe — one of the world’s most recognisable leaders with his thin stripe of moustache and thick-rimmed spectacles — embraced his new role as the antagonist of the West.
He had been rumoured for years to have prostate cancer, but according to the official account, his frequent trips to Singapore were related to his treatment for cataracts.
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