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Key
facts about Zimbabwe's President Mugabe
Reuters
June 01, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSL01169470
President Robert
Mugabe has left Zimbabwe to attend a food summit in Rome in his
first official trip abroad since March 29 parliamentary elections
which his ruling party lost to the opposition, state television
said on Sunday.
Here are some
facts about Mugabe:
- Once hailed
as a model African democrat, Mugabe has held fast to power for
years despite a deepening political and economic crisis that critics
blame on his policies.
- Mugabe was
born in February 1924 on the Kutama Mission northwest of Harare
and educated by Jesuits. He earned seven university degrees, three
while in prison.
- Mugabe was
jailed for 10 years in 1964 for opposing white minority rule.
A guerrilla war began in 1972 against Ian Smith's white government
of then-Rhodesia.
- Mugabe became
leader of the ZANU liberation movement in the mid-1970s after
his release from jail.
- The renamed
ZANU-PF won independence elections in 1980 and Mugabe became Prime
Minister. He took office as president in 1987 following a change
in the constitution.
- In 2000,
Mugabe tasted defeat when voters in a referendum rejected a constitution
that would have given him more power. He turned on the small white
minority, blaming them.
- He pushed
legislation through parliament allowing his government to seize
over half the white-owned farms. Self-styled war veterans occupied
many other farms, often with violence.
- Mugabe was
elected to his third term as president in 2002 but his crackdown
against the MDC and other opponents, including journalists, increased
his international isolation.
- Mugabe's
party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in the
March 2008 elections. Official results showed that opposition
leader Morgan Tsvangirai also beat Mugabe in the presidential
elections, but not by enough to avoid a run-off.
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