Robert Mugabe
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe sharply divides opinion and embodies the contradictions of his country’s history and political culture. As a symbol of African liberation and a stalwart opponent of white rule, he was respected and revered by many. This heroic status contrasted sharply, in the eyes of his rivals and victims, with repeated cycles of gross human rights violations. Mugabe presided over the destruction of a vibrant society, capital flight, and mass emigration precipitated by the policies of his government, resulting in his demonic image in Western media.
This timely biography addresses the coup, led by some of Mugabe’s closest associates, that forced his resignation after thirty-seven years in power. Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut explain Mugabe’s formative experiences as a child and young man; his role as an admired Afro-nationalist leader in the struggle against white settler rule; and his evolution into a political manipulator and survivalist. They also address the emergence of political opposition to his leadership and the uneasy period of coalition government. Ultimately, they reveal the complexity of the man who stamped his personality on Zimbabwe’s first four decades of independence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sober biography of one of Africa's longest-serving presidents, Onslow and Plaut provide a brief but comprehensive overview of a controversial leader who's largely reviled in the West but often revered in Africa. The book traces Robert Mugabe's evolution from freedom fighter in the 1960s and 1970s including his leadership in the Zimbabwe African National Union, one of two main liberation movements fighting the white minority regime in Rhodesia to his succession as prime minister at independence in 1980 and, later, president. The authors don't shy away from discussing his worst choices including the brutal suppression of 1980s opposition movement Zimbabwe African People's Union; the harassment and intimidation of members of the Movement for Democratic Change party during the 2002, 2008, and 2013 elections; the disastrous intervention in the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003, at a cost to the country of one billion dollars and many lives; and the Fast Track Land Reform program, the state-sanctioned violent acquisition of white-owned farms by supposed war veterans (many of whom were unemployed urban youths too young to have actually fought) but don't vilify him. Written in lucid prose, the informative book is commendable for its balanced assessment of 37 years' worth of very tumultuous events.
