A teacher by training and a politician by practice, Mugabe has been the preeminent political leader in Zimbabwe for more than two decades.

He was born in 1924, raised, and trained as a teacher at Kutama Mission in Zvimba in what is now northwestern Zimbabwe.

Mugabe taught at the mission school between 1941 and 1943. After several other brief teaching jobs around Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), Mugabe won a scholarship to the University of Fort Hare College in South Africa. There he was introduced to literature on communism, Marxism, and Gandhian passive resistance.

After completing his bachelor's degree, he returned to Zimbabwe to teach, then taught in Zambia where he read privately and acquired another degree.

I955 Mugabe went to Ghana because blacks in Zimbabwe were not allowed to move to different parts of the country. He taught there for fours and learnt a lot from the skills of Kwame Nkrumah. In 1960 Mugabe returned home to enter politics.

He first joined the nationalist group the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) in 1963. The leader of this party was Joshua Nkomo, a great nationalist from Matebele land.

But in 1964, after several arrests and a falling-out with its leadership, Mugabe went to Tanzania and joined the newly formed Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). ZANU inaugurated the war for independence that same year. Its leader was Rev. Sithole and Mugabe became the Secretary General. The party was for the Shona speaking people.

On returning to Zimbabwe, Mugabe was again arrested and spent most of the next decade (1964-74) in prison, earning bachelor degrees in law and administration while there. In prison, ZANU members elected Mugabe to replace Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole as party head. His position as party head was contested until 1976, when the military wing of ZANU recognized him as leader.

From prison, Mugabe established his base in Mozambique where he got assistance from Samora Machel. That is why the forces of Ian Smith used to bomb Mozambique territory.

On October 9, 1976 Mugabe and Nkomo issued a statement declaring the formation of a Patriotic Front, Embracing ZANU and ZAPU forces. They also agreed to send a joint delegation to Geneva Peace Conference on Southern Rhodesia.

In May 1977, Mugabe addressed a UN sponsored conference on Rhodesia in at Maputo. He put it clear that Zimbabwe can only be liberated by use of force other than negotiations. This statement received much applause from President Idi Amin Of Uganda. It also put pressure on the British and Americans who in turn forced Ian Smith to hand over power.

After four more years of war, Mugabe and ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo entered negotiations with the Rhodesians, concluding with a good plan for Zimbabwe's independence in April 1980.

He took part in the independence negotiations that took place at Lancaster house in London in 1979. In this conference, Robert Mugabe contributed a lot in expressing the need for independence.

He returned home from Mozambique on January 28, 1980 being the first time since 1978. Over 200,000 people received Mugabe at the Highfields Townships. He also launched his manifesto immediately.

During the campaigns, he distinguished himself an intelligent, radical, articulate, politically clean and well-intentioned politician. He therefore won the elections of 4^th March 1980 getting 57 seats, i.e. 63%%. In elections just before independence, Mugabe and ZANU won by a landslide, and he became Prime Minister.

On April 10, 1980 he named Rev. Canaan Banana, a Methodist Church Minister and former political detainee as president elect of Zimbabwe. His opponent Joshua Nkomo was made Vice president

Since independence, Mugabe has proven to be a highly pragmatic leader. After the war he called for reconciliation and he took care not to offend Western governments or the white community of Zimbabwe, whose skills and wealth the country needed.

His policy towards the Western countries changed recently when he forced the whites to leave land for Africans. The Western media described him as the worst dictator in Africa.

Although he has often espoused socialism, he has maintained an essentially free-market economy. At the same time, Mugabe has consolidated his power.

He put considerable pressure on Nkomo and the ZAPU party until 1987, when they agreed to join ZANU, creating the ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). With the creation of an executive presidency the same year, opposition, official or otherwise, effectively ended.

In elections in 1990 Mugabe won 78 percent of the popular vote. ZANU-PF has remained the de facto ruling party, typically winning all but a handful of parliamentary seats.

In 2002 presidential elections Mugabe rejected the Commonwealth Election monitoring groups who had come to observe elections in Zimbabwe. He asked them whether Africans have ever been called to monitor elections in Europe. However reports indicated that there was massive rigging in the country. His opponent Morgan Tsvangurai rejected the results.

The present lack of an obvious successor has caused considerable speculation in political circles and the press, as Mugabe, the dominant political force in Zimbabwe, begins to show his age.

After the year 2002, Zimbabwe's economy started declining tremendously as result of sanctions placed on her by the Western donor countries especially Britain. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth. Even when the Chogm took place in Uganda, Mugabe was not invited.

On his recent visit to Uganda, attend­ing the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM), the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, asked the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, to intervene in the Zimbabwe crisis.

As expected, Museveni politely prom­ised to use his new office as chairperson of the Commonwealth to talk to Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2003 and when the suspension was not lifted after its expiry in 2004, Mugabe withdrew his country from the organisation.

Museveni, however, told Brown that the West had misunderstood the Zimbabwean president. "Mugabe is a revolutionary who fought to emancipate his people. When you are dealing with a revolutionary, you listen to his points rather than give him orders."

According to the Ugandan newspaper, New Vision, Museveni advised Britain to help Mugabe economically so that the other problems facing Zimbabwe could be solved in due course. Brown said Britain was willing to rehabilitate the Zimbabwean economy but Mugabe did not want to listen.

Museveni discussed a number of issues with Brown, including (interestingly) the land problem in Uganda and compensation for Ugandan World War II veterans. Britain's ongoing problem with Zimbabwe arose over Mugabe's land reform programme starred in 2000.