The UN has warned that Zimbabwe is facing its worst hunger crisis in a decade with half of the population - 7.7 million people - being food insecure; due to an economic meltdown and unprecendented malnutrition; according to the WFP. Also, widespread corruption has contributed to a rise in sexual bribery in Zimbabwe; with an unprecedented number of women reporting being forced to exchange sex for employment or business favours. More than 57% of women surveyed by 'Transparency International Zimbabwe' (TIZ), said they had been forced to offer sexual favours in exchange for jobs, medical care and even when seeking placements at schools for their children. The report, entitled Gender and Corruption, found women were increasingly vulnerable to sexual abuse amid the deteriorating Zimbabwean economy. Hence it is very important that economic stability, rule-of-law and human rights are restored in Zimbabwe - with the assistance of the international community - so that peace and prosperity can be manifested in Zimbabwe.

When the southern African country of Rhodesia was reborn as Zimbabwe in 1980, democracy advocates celebrated the defeat of a white supremacist regime and the end of colonial rule. Zimbabwean crowds cheered their new prime minister, freedom fighter Robert Mugabe, with little idea of the misery he would bring them. Under his leadership for the next 30 years, Zimbabwe slid from self-sufficiency into poverty and astronomical inflation. The government once praised for its magnanimity and ethnic tolerance was denounced by leaders like South African Nobel Prize-winner Desmond Tutu. Millions of refugees fled the country. How did the heroic Mugabe become a hated autocrat, and why were so many outside of Zimbabwe blind to his bloody misdeeds for so long? In A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe Daniel Compagnon reveals that while the conditions and perceptions of Zimbabwe had changed, its leader had not. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was a cold tactician with no regard for human rights. Through eyewitness accounts and unflinching analysis, Compagnon describes how Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) built a one-party state under an ideological cloak of anti-imperialism. To maintain absolute authority, Mugabe undermined one-time ally Joshua Nkomo, terrorized dissenters, stoked the fires of tribalism, covered up the massacre of thousands in Matabeleland, and siphoned off public money to his minions—all well before the late 1990s, when his attempts at radical land redistribution finally drew negative international attention. A Predictable Tragedy vividly captures the neopatrimonial and authoritarian nature of Mugabe's rule that shattered Zimbabwe's early promises of democracy and offers lessons critical to understanding Africa's predicament and its prospects for the future.

This book is a philosopher’s view into the chaotic postcolony of Zimbabwe, delving into Robert Mugabe’s Will to Power. The Will to Power refers to a spirited desire for power and overwhelming fear of powerlessness that Mugabe artfully concealed behind performances of invincibility. Nietzsche’s philosophical concept of the Will to Power is interpreted and expanded in this book to explain how a tyrant is produced and enabled, and how he performs his tyranny. Achille Mbembe’s novel concept of the African postcolony is mobilised to locate Zimbabwe under Mugabe as a domain of the madness of power. The book describes Mugabe’s development from a vulnerable youth who was intoxicated with delusions of divine commission to a monstrous tyrant of the postcolony who mistook himself for a political messiah. This account exposes how post-political euphoria about independence from colonialism and the heroism of one leader can easily lead to the degeneration of leadership. However, this book is as much about bad leadership as it is about bad followership. Away from Eurocentric stereotypes where tyranny is isolated to African despots, this book shows how Mugabe is part of an extended family of tyrants of the world. He fought settler colonialism but failed to avoid being infected by it, and eventually became a native coloniser to his own people. The book concludes that Zimbabwe faces not only a simple struggle for democracy and human rights, but a Himalayan struggle for liberation from genocidal native colonialism that endures even after Robert Mugabe’s dethronement and death.

Zimbabwe is constitutionally a republic. It has been dominated by President Robert Mugabe, his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, and its authoritarian security sector since independence in 1980. Presidential and parliamentary elections held on July 31 were free of the widespread violence of the 2008 elections, but the process was neither fair nor credible. A unilateral declaration of the election date by the hastily convened and politically compromised Constitutional Court, formed after the country adopted a new constitution in March; a heavily biased state media; limitations on international observers; failure to provide a publicly useful voters' register; and a chaotic separate voting process for the security sector contributed to a deeply flawed process. Two of the three partners in the 2009 coalition government opposed the election date, citing the lack of previously agreed to reforms in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)-mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA). The courts dismissed challenges filed after the elections by non-ZANU-PF parties. The elections resulted in the formation of a unitary ZANU-PF government led by President Mugabe and Vice President Joice Mujuru and ZANU-PF supermajorities in both houses of Parliament. The authorities failed at times to maintain effective control over the security forces. Security forces committed human rights abuses. The most important human rights problems remained the government's targeting for torture, abuse, arrest, and harassment members of non-ZANU-PF parties and civil society activists; partisan application of the rule of law by security forces and the judiciary; the government's compulsory acquisition of private property; and restrictions on civil liberties.

Robert Mugabe, one of the world’s most infamous dictators, rose to power in Rhodesia, the southern African region now known as independent Zimbabwe. As a leader in Rhodesia’s nationalist resistance movement of the 1970s, Mugabe mobilized his compatriots in their struggle for control of the white-ruled African nation, which had declared independence from Great Britain in 1965. The bloody civil war finally ended with Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. As the president of the newly free nation, Mugabe was a beacon for black African self-rule, raising hopes on the continent and around the world. However, through a series of ill-conceived economic programs and a disastrously mismanaged land-redistribution scheme, Mugabe and his corrupt government brought ruin to his homeland. Creating a harsh climate of fear, brutality, and zero tolerance for opposition, Mugabe’s rule drained a once prosperous nation of its economic and human resources. In Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, learn more about the internal workings of one of the modern world’s most devastating dictatorships.

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.

Arguably, one of the most polarising figures in modern times has been Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the former President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The mere mentioning of his name raises a lot of debate and often times vicious, if not irreconcilable differences, both in Zimbabwe and beyond. In an article titled: ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’, Mahmood Mamdani succinctly captures the polarity thus: ‘It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe… and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa.’ This, together with his recent ‘stylised’ ouster, speaks volumes to his conflicted legacy. The divided opinion on Mugabe’s legacy can broadly be represented, first, by those who consider him as a champion of African liberation, a Pan-Africanist, an unmatched revolutionary and an avid anti-imperialist who, literally, ‘spoke the truth’ to Western imperialists. On the other end of the spectrum are those who – seemingly paying scant regard to the predicament of millions of black Zimbabweans brutally dispossessed of their land and human dignity since the Rhodesian days – have differentially characterised Mugabe as a rabid black fascist, an anti-white racist, an oppressor, and a dictator. Drawing on all these opinions and characterisations, the chapters ensconced in this volume critically reflect on the personality, leadership style and contributions of Robert Mugabe during his time in office, from 1980 to November 2017. The volume is timely in view of the current contested transition in Zimbabwe, and with regard to the ongoing consultations on the Land Question in neighbouring South Africa. It is a handy and richly documented text for students and practitioners in political science, African studies, economics, policy studies, development studies, and global studies.

"Documents how the Zimbabwe African Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the former sole ruling party, is using its greater political power within the government to obstruct human rights improvements. ZANU-PF supporters continue to commit abuses against perceived Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters with impunity. Police, prosecuting authorities, and court officials aligned to ZANU-PF conduct politically motivated prosecutions of MDC legislators and activists"--Cover, p. [4].

"Robert Mugabe's ZANU(PF) party - the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Patriotic Front formed by the merger of ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) - won a landslide victory in the independence elections of 1980. Mugabe came to power with an avowedly revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist programme, ehos and worldview. His dominance was butressed by victory in the brutal civil war in Matabeleland and assured by the successful marginalisation of his arch rival, the legendary Nkomo, and by rigid control over the levers of state power. Yet Zimbabwe's position on the world stage and in Africa has been profoundly affected by practical considerations of international political realities. In common with many emergent countries sharing Zimbabwe's political, economic, social and historical experience, today her political and economic relations network only very partially reflects her pre-independence Marxist positions. The country has had to jettison much of its ideological radicalism in the face of the grim practicalities of international politics. Striking examples of divergence abound in Zimbabwe's worldwide relatonships and none more so than with apartheid South Africa and in the failure to maintain friendship with powerful erstwhile supporters of ZANU in the independence struggle - China and Russia."--Bloomsbury Publishing.