Analysis | How Robert Mugabe transformed from liberator to despot, leaving legacy of economic ruin in Zimbabwe

From widely acclaimed liberator of his nation to despotic dictator, Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule of Zimbabwe has been one of Africa’s most controversial and influential.

Wily and ruthless, the 93-year-old Mugabe outmanoeuvred his opponents for decades but was undone by his own miscalculation in his final weeks in power. He blundered when he sidelined his right-hand man in order to position his wife, Grace, as his successor. He didn’t anticipate that the fired vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, would swiftly and skilfully depose him.

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 finally quits as president, and Zimbabwe rejoices

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. It didn’t matter that the farms, which had been pledged to poor blacks, instead went to his generals, Cabinet ministers, cronies and his wife – or that many of the fields lay fallow years later. Even now Mugabe is widely revered by many Africans as the continent’s most radical de-coloniser.