Chemical killer
Surgical abortions have slowed, but pills and chemicals are reaching more homes—and killing more babies
Surgical abortions have slowed, but pills and chemicals are reaching more homes—and killing more babies
The country remains tense after Jan. 6, but President Joe Biden’s inauguration was calm
Pro-Life Action League founder Joe Scheidler spent decades trying to stop abortion
The events of 2020 expose contradictions in the pro-abortion message
Andrée Seu Peterson / Janie B. Cheaney / Joel Belz / Marvin Olasky / Mindy Belz / The Editors /
Law / Lifestyle / Technology / Religion / Sports / History / Health / Education / Medicine / Business
Dean's List / Metro Minute / Snapshots of China / Sophia's World / Whirled Views /
Music / Q&A / Children's Books / Books / Movies / Television
Quick Takes / Quotables / Human Race / News
Robert Mugabe makes a national address to Zimbabwe in 2010. (ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)
Robert Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, died this morning in Singapore. He was 95. The onetime national hero who led the fight for independence against Britain and white colonial rule later stamped out dissent. During his almost four decades in power he oversaw the destruction of his resource-rich country’s economy.
Mugabe became a black nationalist while studying to be a teacher in South Africa. When he returned in 1960 to his country, then the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia, he joined the fight against the government, which jailed him for 11 years. Even after leaving prison, he continued the battle from nearby Mozambique.
When peace talks in London led to independence, Mugabe won election as Zimbabwe’s first prime minister and became president in 1987. During the first years of black majority rule, Mugabe encouraged white farmers—and even former Prime Minister Ian Smith—to stay and help rebuild the country. That changed when white farmers sided with the political opposition.
According to a profile in the New Statesman, Mugabe was an Anglophile who encouraged cricket playing: It “civilizes people and creates good gentlemen.” But Mugabe was not a good gentleman. He often turned to violence to subdue his political enemies.
In the early 1980s he used North Korean–trained Zimbabwe troops against his opponents, killing thousands. In 2000, he mobilized war vets to seize white-owned farms, turning them over to people who had no idea how to run them. In 2008 he refused to concede an election, demanding a recount and unleashing his supporters to kill and terrorize backers of the winner, Morgan Tsvangirai. His economic policies led to hyperinflation, and the military finally ousted him in a coup in 2017.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Mugabe called himself an ordinary Catholic “who goes to Mass every Sunday.” His shows of religiosity could not earn the support of many church leaders in his country, but he remained unrepentant in the face of political and church opposition: “Only God who appointed me will remove me.”
Mugabe’s second wife, Grace, survives him.
Comments
TxAgEngr
Posted: Sat, 09/07/2019 10:30 amMr. Mugabe's successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is as big a tyrannical criminal as Mugabe, so there is no change in sight for the average citizen.