IN the year 1924, on 21 February part of Zimbabwean history began as the first black president of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born into a Catholic family at Kutama Mission.
As he was growing up he was known to be an intellectual child, always carrying his books even when he was herding the cattle.
He pursued his studies at Kutama College as well as University of Fort Hare.
Mugabe worked as a school teacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, as well as Ghana.
Mugabe joined the nationalist protest led by blacks in attempts of freeing Zimbabwe, which was then called Southern Rhodesia, from white rule.
This led to his imprisonment in 1964.
When he was released in 1974, he fled to Mozambique where he took up the leadership role of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) political party from 1975 to 1980.
In 1980 he was elected prime minister under the Zanu PF ticket and led the party up to 2017.
He had love/hate relations with his then vice president Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).
A blackspot in his career remains the 1982 to 1985 period in which he unleashed the Fifth Brigade in Matebeleland and Midlands provinces where close to 20 000 people were killed in what is widely known as Gukurahundi.
In 2000 he led in the invasion of some white owned farms in a chaotic and bloody land redistribution programme that reduced Zimbabwe from its bread basket status to a basket case.
When opposition parties began to emerge Mugabe did not take that well as he crushed all dissenting voices.
All the elections since the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were marked with massive violence and electoral manipulation.
As Mugabe approached the twilight of his career his Zanu PF party was engulfed by factionalism as leaders strategically positioned themselves in preparations for takeover.
It is during this period that his second wife Grace Mugabe emerges in the Zanu PF structures and is propped up with hopes of taking over.
The factional fights reach a crescendo in 2017 when the then vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa is fired from government.
The military, which had developed sour relations with Grace intervenes and in the process ousts Mugabe, bringing to an end his 37 years in power.
After such a decorated journey Mugabe’s life ends on 6 September 2019 at the age of 95.
“It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe,” President Mnangagwa announced the death of the former ruler.
