Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who on Friday saw his stranglehold on power threatened by a long delayed unity government announced next month, has seen his standing plummet from African liberator to despot.
The 84-year-old who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980 and previously vowed that the opposition would never rule in his lifetime was once the darling of the West but is now an international pariah.
Born on February 21, 1924, at Kutama Mission northwest of the capital Harare, Mugabe is described as a studious child and a loner and qualified as a teacher at the age of 17.
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An intellectual who initially embraced Marxism, he took his first steps in politics when he enrolled at Fort Hare University in South Africa, where he met many of southern Africa's future black nationalist leaders.
He then resumed teaching, moving to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Ghana - where he was profoundly influenced by the country's founder president Kwame Nkrumah - and married a vivacious schoolteacher Sarah Francesca (Sally) Hayfron there.
The couple returned to what was then Southern Rhodesia in 1960.
As a member of various nationalist parties which were banned by the white-minority government, Mugabe was detained with other nationalist leaders in 1964 and spent the next 10 years in prison camps or jail.
But he used his incarceration to gather three degrees, including a law degree from London and a bachelor of administration from the University of South Africa by correspondence courses.
Personal tragedy struck at this time - Mugabe's four-year-old son died after an illness - but Rhodesian leader Smith did not allow Mugabe out of prison to attend the funeral.
He used those years to consolidate his position in the Zimbabwe African National Union and emerged from prison in November 1974 as Zanu leader.
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