The former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has passed away at the age of 95, his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, announced on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th September, 2019) The former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has passed away at the age of 95, his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, announced on Friday.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) on February 21, 1924.
In 1951, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and English from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. Mugabe taught at various schools from 1942-1955 while studying.
From 1955-1958, he taught at a training college in Zambia and afterward worked for two years at St. Mary's Teacher Training College in Takoradi, Ghana.
After Mugabe returned to his hometown in 1960, he took over as a public secretary of the National Democratic Party, led by Joshua Nkomo. The party was banned by the government a year later but re-registered as the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
Mugabe created his own resistance movement � the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) � in 1963. Later that year, he was arrested and spent 11 years in prison.
After his release, Mugabe headed ZANU again and entered into an alliance with Nkomo's ZAPU. This political force, which had fought to secure the nation's independence from the United Kingdom, was named the Patriotic Front (PF). In the PF, Mugabe led the left, radical wing, called himself a Marxist, and advocated the seizure of power by force.
ZANU won an absolute majority in the 1980 parliamentary elections, and Mugabe became prime minister of the new independent Republic of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe became Zimbabwe's second president on December 31, 1987. He was repeatedly re-elected, with the last election taking place in August 2013, in which he won 61 percent of the vote.
In December 2016, The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party approved Mugabe's candidacy for the 2018 presidential election.
In early November 2017, Mugabe fired his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been considered his successor and was supported by the military.
Later that month, the military deployed armored vehicles to the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, took control of the state-owned broadcaster and the president's residence, and placed Mugabe under house arrest.
ZANU-PF dismissed Mugabe from his position as party leader and called on him to resign from the presidency.
Mugabe announced his resignation on November 21, 2017, after ZANU-PF decided to begin impeachment proceedings in the parliament.
On November 25, 2018, it became known that Mugabe was undergoing treatment in Singapore and that he lost the ability to walk. He died on September 6, 2019.
Mugabe was an Honorary Doctor of Lomonosov Moscow State University. He also had honorary degrees of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Massachusetts, which revoked his titles in 2007 and 2008, respectively.
In 1994, the Queen of the United Kingdom knighted Mugabe for his role in overthrowing the apartheid regime. His honorary Knighthood was withdrawn in 2008 in connection with numerous cases of human rights violations.
Mugabe was married twice. He married Sally Hayfron, his first wife, in 1961. Their only son died in childhood, and Sally died in 1992. In 1996, he married Grace Marufu. He had three children from his second marriage: two sons and a daughter.
