Robert Mugabe death: How crowds danced in the streets when his bloody reign finally ended

He was the revolutionary Marxist son of a carpenter who led Zimbabwe to black majority rule, but will be remembered for the bloodshed, persecution and economic chaos that scarred much of his long and brutal regime.

Robert Mugabe was born in February 1924 in the Kutuma Mission village in the then recently-established British colony of Southern Rhodesia.

After qualifying as a teacher he rose through the ranks of the emerging political parties resisting the white minority government.

He was arrested in 1963 and spent much of the next decade in prison before being released in 1974 and fleeing to neighbouring Mozambique.

There Mugabe helped organise the guerilla war against the regime of Ian Smith, which had unilaterally declared independence from the UK in 1965.

In 1979 Mugabe and other black party leaders negotiated the end of white minority rule in talks at Lancaster House in central London presided over by foreign secretary Lord Carrington.

He returned to the country that would soon be known as Zimbabwe as leader of the dominant ZANU-PF party and became prime minister in April 1980.

It marked the start of 37 years of political domination of a country he reduced from one of the most affluent in Africa to a byword for grotesque economic mismanagement and grinding poverty.

The initial optimism for the future of a mineral-rich democracy quickly evaporated when reports began to emerge of massacres in the country’s western province of Matabeleland following a fallout between Mugabe and the country’s second most powerful politician, ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo.

An estimated 10,000 people were killed in brutal campaigns of oppression led by an elite armed force known as the Fifth Brigade.

Initial plans for a peaceful redistribution of land were scrapped and “veterans” of the guerilla war were sent in to dispossess, often violently, long-established white farmers. In many cases this led to fertile land being neglected and harvests ruined.

Mugabe became president in 1987 but as he grew older he became increasingly paranoid and political freedoms were rapidly ended. He also became increasingly obsessed by homosexuality, describing it as “un-African.”

In 2001 gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was beaten up by Mugabe’s bodyguards when he tried to make a citizen’s arrest of him during a visit to Brussels.

Mugabe was subjected to an EU travel ban but was allowed to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome in 2005. While there he shook hands with the Prince of Wales, who was seated one place away from him. Clarence House said Charles had been “caught by surprise” when Mugabe leaned over to greet him.

The previous year the then-foreign secretary Jack Straw was also embarrassed after being photographed shaking hands with Mugabe and saying “nice to see you” when they met in New York. Mr Straw later defended the handshake, implying he did not know who he was meeting in a “dark corner.”

Mugabe’s economic mismanagement reached a peak in 2008 and 2009 when hyperinflation hit 500 billion per cent and the highest denomination banknote was for 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

In 2008 he was stripped of an honorary knighthood awarded in 1994, over his “abuse of human rights” and “abject disregard” for democracy.

Despite becoming the world’s oldest head of state, Mugabe, known for his smart suits and tiny moustache, showed no sign of stepping down even into his nineties. But in November 2017 his long rule was brought to a dramatic end by a military takeover.

He was threatened with impeachment and he and his wife Grace were held under house arrest. He finally resigned as president, claiming the decision was “voluntary... and arises from my concern for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe”.

The announcement prompted jubilant scenes in the capital Harare as crowds took to the streets to celebrate the dictator’s downfall.