Robert Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe in 1980 after a
long civil war in Rhodesia. The white minority government
had become an international outcast in refusing to give in
to the inevitability of black majority rule. Finally the
defiant white prime minister Ian Smith was forced to step
down and Mugabe was elected president. Initially he
promised reconciliation between white and blacks,
encouraged Zimbabwe's economic and social development, and
was admired throughout the world as one of the leaders of
the emerging nations and as a model for a transition from
colonial leadership. But as Martin Meredith shows in this
history of Mugabe's rule, Mugabe from the beginning was
sacrificing his purported ideals—and Zimbabwe's potential—
to the goal of extending and cementing his autocratic
leadership. Over time, Mugabe has become ever more
dictatorial, and seemingly less and less interested in the
welfare of his people, treating Zimbabwe's wealth and
resources as spoils of war for his inner circle. In recent
years he has unleashed a reign of terror and corruption in
his country. Like the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone
and Liberia, Zimbabwe has been on a steady slide to
disaster. Now for the first time the whole story is told in
detail by an expert. It is a riveting and tragic political
story, a morality tale, and an essential text for
understanding today's Africa.
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