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Africauptodate

Hero Robert Mugabe Dies At 95

Updated: Sep 14, 2019




Former president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe has died, announced the government of Zimbabwe. Ex-president Robert Mugabe considered by many as one of Africa's greatest heroes, authentic revolutionaries, and Pan-Africanists, was 95. He died on September 6, 2019 in a hospital in Singapore after been ill for a quite while.


Ex-president Robert Mugabe played an invaluable role in the armed struggle for liberation of Zimbabwe, then South Rhodesia, from racist and brutal minority European rule. He became the first African prime minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, and president until he relinquished power in 2017.


During his 37 year reign, Robert Mugabe introduced and implemented remarkable policies aimed at uplifting the lives of the country's majority Africans, including the following:


1) Education reform policies that provided access to education for all. The policies propelled Zimbabwe's literacy rate to among the highest in world.

2) Policy reforms geared towards ensuring accessibility to medical and health services for all Zimbabweans.

3) Land reform policies for redistributing land looted from African peasants by European settlers during the colonial era. The policies addressed a serious flaw in the country's land tenure pattern at the time of its independence in 1980, whereby over 66% of the country's arable land was owned by 400 farmers of European descent.


Despite Mugabe's obviously great and humane policies, Zimbabwe's economy failed to excel and eventually collapsed during his era, due to the largest extent economic sanctions against Zimbabwe by Western nations. The Western sanctions are known to have been in retaliation of Mugabe's land redistribution policies that resulted in farmers with Western ancestral roots to lose looted land they inherited. The West is also known to have been unhappy with Mugabe's daring and fearless stance against Western neo-colonialism, and probably also his outspoken distaste of some of the values and lifestyles the West dearly embrace.


The Western economic sanctions that have prevailed even after Ex-president Mugabe stepped down, are never mentioned by the West or hard core critics of the ex-president, when talking about the implacable economic situation in Zimbabwe. Instead the they deliberately and falsely blame the situation wholly on hero Mugabe through fake accusations aimed at demonizing him and his political epoch.


Notwithstanding, however, one could safely argue that Zimbabwe emerged as a very strong nation politically and socially during and after Robert Mugabe's rule, in terms of among others: political awareness and confidence, national pride and patriotism, inclusiveness, literacy, public ownership of natural assets, national integrity and security, etc. These kind of achievements are among the prerequisites for sustained development of a nation in a long term perspective. As such, because of solid ground set by hero Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe will bounce back big time economically, even with the silly Western sanctions on place!

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