Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe eats ice cream after addressing the
crowd at his inauguration and swearing-in ceremony on August 22, 2013
at the 60,000-seater sports stadium in Harare. Mugabe will turn 90 with
no idea of the secret to his longevity.
HARARE,
"I
do not know how I have come to live this long," Zimbabwe's President
Robert Mugabe said a month ahead of his 90th birthday, which he
celebrates on Friday.
Africa's oldest leader, he has outlived most of his younger siblings and most of his political foes.
"It is all God's will," he said at the burial of his younger sister Bridget who died aged 78.
Mugabe once quipped he would rule his country until he turned 100.
After winning a new five-year term last year, after more than three decades in power, he is not far from reaching that goal.
The
country's new constitution could see the man who first came into office
as prime minister at age 56, serve as president until he is 99.
After
three turbulent decades at the helm of the former British colony, the
firebrand leader has gone from a darling of the West to international
pariah.
Mugabe swept to power in 1980 as an
independence hero in the fight against white minority rule, bringing
democracy to millions of black Zimbabweans, and was widely credited with
health and education reforms.
He was also lauded for
forging reconciliation between blacks and whites at independence --
having offered some key ministerial posts to moderate white politicians.
More
praise was showered upon him for allowing Ian Smith, the white
supremacist Rhodesian ruler who had jailed him for a decade, to stay on
in Zimbabwe serving as a lawmaker.
But Mugabe's lustre quickly faded.
From
crushing political dissent to ushering in disastrous land reforms that
saw the economy crumble, many accuse Mugabe of turning the regional
breadbasket into a basket case.
NATIONALISTIC LEADER
Born
on February 21, 1924, at Kutama Mission northwest of the capital
Harare, Mugabe was raised in a Catholic family and was described as a
loner and a studious child.
After his father walked out
on Mugabe's mother and siblings when he was 10, the young man
concentrated ever harder on his studies, and qualified as a
schoolteacher at the age of 17.
An intellectual who
initially embraced Marxism, he enrolled at Fort Hare University in South
Africa, meeting many of southern Africa's future black nationalist
leaders.
As a member of various nationalist parties
that were banned by the white-minority government, Mugabe was detained
in 1964 and spent the next 10 years in prison camps or jail.
He used his incarceration to gain three degrees through correspondence courses, but the years in prison left their mark.
His
four-year-old son by his first wife Sarah Francesca Hayfron died while
he was behind bars, but Rhodesian leader Smith would not allow him leave
to attend the funeral.
On release from jail in 1974 he
became leader of the ZANU party, and left for neighbouring Mozambique
from where his banned group staged a guerrilla war on white
minority-ruled Rhodesia.
Economic sanctions and war forced Smith to negotiate, after which ZANU came to power in the 1980 election.
His
initial period in office was based on public reconciliation, but Mugabe
soon showed that his velvet glove cloaked an iron fist.
He
put down a revolt among the minority Ndebele people with his North
Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in a campaign that killed an estimated
20,000 suspected "dissidents" between 1982 and 1986.
Faced
with angry war veterans, in 2000 he launched controversial land
reforms, driving out white farmers and seizing their land in often
violent rampages by his supporters.
Despite strong
opposition to his rule, Mugabe retains the support of a significant
proportion of Zimbabweans, who cherish his image as a freedom fighter.
Following
the death of his first wife, he married his personal secretary who is
41 years younger than him. They have two sons and a daughter.
BLISTERING RHETORIC
In
recent years, Mugabe - one of the world's easily recognisable leaders
with his philtrum-only moustache and thick-rimmed spectacles -- often
embraced his new role as the antagonist of the West.
He uses blistering rhetoric to blame Zimbabwe's downward spiral on Western sanctions.
"If
people say you are dictator... you know they are saying this merely to
tarnish and demean your status, then you don't pay much attention," he
said in a 2013 documentary.
He has told his critics to
"go hang" and has vowed to forge ahead with his drive to empower blacks
by forcing foreign-owned companies to cede their majority shares to
locals.
Even as he turns 90, as he enters his 34th year
in power, and his health is increasingly questioned, there is no hint
of a succession plan in his party.
"The 89 years don't mean anything," said the iron self-confident Mugabe shortly before last year's election.
"They
haven't changed me, have they? They haven't withered me. They haven't
made me senile yet, no. I still have ideas, ideas that need to be
accepted by my people."
