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From a widely acclaimed liberator of his nation to a despotic dictator, Robert Mugabe's 37 year rule of Zimbabwe has been one of Africa's most controversial and influential.
But Mnangagwa had spent years learning from Mugabe how to seize and wield power. For years, Mugabe inspired other leaders across the continent to emulate his tactics and extend their rule by manipulating the constitution and suppressing opposition through violence and intimidation.
Mugabe's often violent seizure of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms was his signature action – and devastated the country's agricultural production, transforming what had been known as Africa's breadbasket into a land of barren fields and hungry people. Mugabe cloaked the land grabs in ringing rhetoric, shaking his fist, and shouting that Africa's land should be held by Africans.
His mismanagement of Zimbabwe's economy was staggering. The country has been transformed from one that could offer good employment opportunities to its well-educated population to a place of so little hope that people left in droves.
Mugabe had a Marxist belief that even the economy would do what he wanted.
The inflation was brought under control only when Zimbabwe dropped its currency and started operating on the US dollar in 2009.
Zimbabwe's industrial sector is estimated to be operating at less than 30 percent of capacity. Tourism has dried up to a trickle. With significant deposits of diamonds, platinum, gold and chrome, Zimbabwe's mining sector has continued to function, but Mugabe's frequent threats of nationalisation discouraged most foreign investment.
The Marange diamond fields, discovered in 2009, proved an unexpected windfall. The high-quality gemstones in easily exploited alluvial fields brought in billions of dollars.
Once the land of liberation from white minority rule, Zimbabwe became one of fear as a result of Mugabe's far-reaching domestic spy network, the Central Intelligence Organisation. Hundreds of opposition supporters were killed or disappeared during election campaigns. Many more were tortured, such as Jestina Mukoko, who after her release from prison bravely advocated for the rights of those detained.
It is hard to remember that Mugabe once enjoyed international praise for bringing Zimbabwe to independence. Throughout the 1970s he directed a deadly, effective guerrilla war against Rhodesia's white minority rule regime.
But even in the glory years of Zimbabwe's early independence, Mugabe appeared cold and calculating in public appearances and speeches.
And then came the bloody campaign in which the army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade brutally put down a small rebel group supporting opposition leader Joshua Nkomo.
"Amnesty Lies International," was how Mugabe dismissed a critical report by Amnesty International.
Tarnished by the killings, Mugabe was still grudgingly respected, especially for his support for the battle against apartheid, the system of white minority rule in neighboring South Africa. When Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990, he quickly visited Zimbabwe to thank Mugabe for his support. But Mugabe came to resent Mandela, who outshined him. When Mugabe married his second wife, Grace, in 1996, Mandela attended the reception. Mugabe glowered with irritation when Mandela got far more cheers from the thousands of guests than he did.
Mandela put forward a generous, inclusive view of African nationalism that won him international praise and a Nobel Peace Prize. Mugabe became a starkly different type of African leader, who marginalised critics and restricted freedom.
Mugabe's leadership became more like that of his one-time foe, Rhodesia's white minority ruler Ian Smith. Mugabe used Rhodesian-era laws to suppress public gatherings and opposition parties. He used the army, the police and the security network to keep the people subservient.
An ascetic leader, Mugabe rarely drank and stayed spry into his 90s. But while his tastes had been relatively modest through the 1980s that changed after his marriage to Grace Mugabe. They built a 25-bedroom mansion on a sprawling property in Harare's Borrowdale suburb that became known as the Blue Roof house for its turquoise tiles imported from China.
In the last months of Mugabe's rule the family's lavish ways became outlandish, even to Zimbabwe's jaded public.
The growing outrage among Zimbabweans at the excesses finally spilled over on Saturday, a few days after the military moved in to put Mugabe under house arrest, a the bulk of Harare's 1.6 million people thronged the streets to demand that the longtime president finally step aside.
Mugabe's rule may have been influential in Africa, but the quick way he fell now may be a warning to all who would follow his ways.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Andrew Meldrum reported in Zimbabwe from shortly after independence in 1980 until 2003 when he was expelled from the country. He is AP's Acting Africa Editor, based in Johannesburg.
(This article was written in an arrangement with the AP.)
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