AFRICAN PEACE MAGAZINE MARCH ISSUE

Election Commission said Mugabe won his seventh term as President, defeating Tsvangirai with 61 percent of the vote.
Born near the Kutama Jesuit Mission in the Zvimba District northwest of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia to a Malawian
father Gabriel Matibili and a Shona mother Bona, both Roman Catholic, Mugabe was the third of six children. He had two
elder brothers, Michael (1919–1934) and Raphael. Both elder brothers died when he was young, leaving Robert and his
younger brother, Donato (1926–2007), and two younger sisters – Sabina and Bridgette. His father, a carpenter, abandoned
the Mugabe family in 1934 after Michael died, in search of work in Bulawayo.
Raised as a Catholic, He qualified as a teacher, but left to study at Fort Hare in South Africa graduating in 1951,
while meeting contemporaries such as Julius Nyerere, Herbert Chitepo, Robert Sobukwe and Kenneth Kaunda.
Mugabe joined the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960. After the administration of Prime Minister Edgar
Whitehead banned the NDP in September 1961, it almost immediately reformed as the Zimbabwe African
Peoples Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe
left ZAPU in 1963 to join the breakaway Zimbabwe
African National Union (ZANU), which had been
formed by the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, Edgar
Tekere, Edson Zvobgo, Enos Nkala and lawyer Herbert
Chitepo.
ZANU was influenced by the Africanist ideas of the
Pan Africanist Congress in South Africa and influenced
by Maoism while ZAPU was an ally of the African
National Congress and was a supporter of a more
orthodox pro‐Soviet line on national liberation. Similar
divisions can also be seen in the independence
movement in Angola between the MPLA and UNITA.
It would have been easy for the party to split along
tribal lines between the Ndebele and Mugabe's own
Shona tribe, but cross‐tribal representation was
maintained by his partners. ZANU leader Sithole
nominated Robert Mugabe as his Secretary General.
During early 1964 tension between the two rival
nationalist parties boiled over into violent conflict
within the black townships. "Many people were
killed as rival former colleagues [within the
nationalist movement] turned against each other,"
write David Martin and Phyllis Johnson; "Homes and
stores were burned and looted." The government
reacted by arresting political agitators for criminal
offences and jailing Nkomo in Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp, a remote detention unit in the south‐east of the
country. After members of ZANU murdered a farmer, Petrus Oberholzer, on 4 July 1964, ZANU and ZAPU
were officially banned on 26 August 1964; their leaders, including Mugabe, were shortly arrested and
imprisoned indefinitely. ZAPU figures joined Nkomo at Gonakudzingwa while the leaders of ZANU were
briefly held in turn at two similar units near Gwelo (Gweru since 1982), first Wha Wha, then, from 15 June 1965,
Sikombela, before being transferred permanently to Salisbury Prison on 8 November 1965.Mugabe earned
numerous further degrees by correspondence courses while detained, including three from the University of
London: degrees in Law and Economics respectively and a Bachelor of Administration. When his three‐year‐old
son Nhamodzenyika died from malaria in Ghana in late 1966, Mugabe petitioned the prison governor to leave
on parole to attend the funeral in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, but was refused permission by Prime Minister Ian
Smith personally. Mugabe unilaterally assumed control of ZANU after the death of Herbert Chitepo on 18
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