Liberation hero turned despot

 Zimbabwe's veteran leader Robert Mugabe once quipped that he'd rule his country until he turned 100.But the 93-year-old's decades-long grip on power slipped yesterday after his own party began an impeachment move against him.First heralded as a liberator who rid the former British colony Rhodesia of white minority rule, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was soon cast in the role of a despot who crushed political dissent and ruined the national economy.After years behind bars as a political prisoner, Mugabe then led a bloody liberation war, which coupled with sanctions, forced the Rhodesian government to the negotiating table. The country finally won independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. 

 After his release from prison in 1974, Mugabe took over as head of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which joined forces in the liberation struggle with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).Nkomo was one of the early casualties of Mugabe's crackdown on dissent. In 1982, he was dismissed from government, where he held the home affairs portfolio, after the discovery of an arms cache in his Matabeleland stronghold. A brutal and deadly crackdown followed.It was the seizure of white-owned farms nearly two decades later that would complete Mugabe's transformation from darling of the West into international pariah -- though his status as a liberation hero still resonates in many parts of Africa.Aimed largely at placating angry war veterans who threatened to destabilise his rule, the land reform policy wrecked the crucial agricultural sector, caused foreign investors to flee and helped plunge the country into economic misery.At the same time, critics say, Mugabe clung to power through human rights abuses and by rigging elections.Born on February 21, 1924 into a Catholic family at Kutama Mission northwest of Harare, Mugabe was described as a loner, and a studious child known to carry a book even while tending cattle in the bush.After his carpenter father walked out on the family when he was 10, the young Mugabe concentrated on his studies, qualifying as a schoolteacher at the age of 17.An intellectual who initially embraced Marxism, he enrolled at Fort Hare University in South Africa, meeting many of southern Africa's future black nationalist leaders.After teaching in Ghana, where he was influenced by founder-president Kwame Nkrumah, Mugabe returned to Rhodesia where he was detained for his nationalist activities in 1964. He spent the next 10 years in prison camps or jail.His four-year-old son by his first wife, Ghanaian-born Sally Francesca Hayfron, died while he was behind bars. Rhodesian leader Ian Smith denied him leave to attend the funeral."His real obsession was not with personal wealth but with power," said biographer Martin Meredith."Year after year Mugabe sustained his rule through violence and repression -- crushing political opponents, violating the courts, trampling on property rights, suppressing the independent press and rigging elections."