Jeremy Paxman - Thatcher: The Downing Street Years TV - The Catherine Tate Show TV - Ian Smith - BBC online - CNN online - Telegraph online - The Times online - Spitting Image TV - Robert Mugabe - Storyville: Mugabe and the Democrats & President TV - Samantha Power - Peter Hain - Peter Godwin - Christopher Hitchens - Lord Carrington - Heidi Holland - Killing Mugabe 2002 - Gus Casely-Hayford TV - Mugabe’s Gamble TV - Mugabe and the White African TV - Gold Mafia TV - How to Survive a Dictator with Muya Chawawa TV -
If ever there was a country founded on blood and greed Rhodesia was it. Jeremy Paxman, Empire V: Doing Good, BBC 2012
Huge areas were governed by handfuls of white men thrown in at the deep end and told to get on with it. ibid.
After months of talks at Lancaster House, a new constitution was agreed. Margaret Thatcher’s practical change of heart meant the Marxist Robert Mugabe became the first prime minister of independent Zimbabwe. Thatcher: The Downing Street Years I: Woman at War, BBC 1993
Paul: Where is Zimbabwe?
Sam: I dunno. The Catherine Tate Show, BBC 2004
I don’t believe in black majority rule in Rhodesia – not in a thousand years. Ian Smith, speech 20th March 1976
Zimbabwe targets all-white farms. BBC online article 6th July 2001
Mugabe rival charged with treason. BBC online headline 20th March 2002
Summit ends with African leaders siding with Mugabe. CNN online article March 2007
Tesco condemned for claiming Zimbabweans don’t want to eat the food they export. Telegraph online article 27th June 2008
Africa gives Mugabe its blessing to fight West’s sanctions. The Times online article 30th March 2007
Mark Thatcher: Tell me, Mr Mugabe, what exactly are your aims in Zimbabwe?
Mugabe: Outlaw the opposition. And achieve a smoothly functioning one-party state.
Mark Thatcher: Ah, just like mumsy. Spitting Image s1e2, ITV 1984
Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen. Robert Mugabe
The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. Robert Mugabe
So, Blair, keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe
Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy! Robert Mugabe, cited Irish Times 15th December 2000
I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for. Robert Mugabe, funeral speech March 2003
We cannot have a situation where people decide to sit in places not allowed and when police remove them they say no. We can’t have that. That is a revolt to the system. Some are crying that they were beaten. Yes you will be thoroughly beaten. When the police say move you move. If you don’t move, you invite the police to use force. Robert Mugabe, speech Egypt 2006 re torture of fifteen trade union activists
Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The people’s votes and the people’s guns are always inseparable twins. Robert Mugabe
We pride ourselves as being top, really, on the African ladder ... We feel that we have actually been advancing rather than going backwards. Robert Mugabe
President Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence in 1980. In 2008 opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is heading towards a presidential win. To protect his rule, President Mugabe unleashes his military forces. Storyville: Mugabe and the Democrats, BBC 2015
Two men from the opposing parties will lead the constitution-making process. ibid.
In July 2013 President Mugabe won another highly contested election. He is still the president of Zimbabwe. ibid.
2018: Now, we are about to have elections. But this time, this time we won’t fail. Nothing will stop us. President Mugabe, who used to cheat us, has been removed. A new Zimbabwe is coming. Storyville: President, Chamisa, BBC 2022
President Mugabe came to power in 1980 and ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years. Mugabe’s long rule was marked by rigged elections, violence against political opponents and extreme economic hardship for the people of Zimbabwe. In November 2017, President Mugabe was ousted by a military coup. The coup was led by Mugabe’s recently sacked Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa. 2018: The stage is set for a crucial election between the leader of the coup and the opposition leader. The popular opposition leader is seen as the favourite to win the election in 2018. Less than four months before the election, Morgan Tsvangirai dies of cancer. Nelson Chamisa succeeds Morgan Tsvangirai as president of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Nelson Chamisa is a 40-year-old lawyer. He has been fighting Mugabe’s regime since he was a student activist. ibid. captions
The MDC Alliance has organized a protest against the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s lack of transparency around the election process. ibid.
Two days after the election the international observers call a press conference. The army is called to disperse crowds gathered in Harare awaiting the election results … 6 people are killed and many are injured during the demonstration. At great risk to his safety, Nelson Chamisa emerges from hiding to meet the victims’ families. ibid.
The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies. Samantha Power
I strongly support European sanctions against Mugabe and his ruling clique. We must do all in our power to help the people of Zimbabwe achieve their freedom and prosperity once again. Peter Hain
In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one. Christopher Hitchens, Inequalities in Zimbabwe
I believe that Mugabe was ... driven into a permanent rage by the adulation heaped internationally on Nelson Mandela, an accolade of praise and recognition that he felt was more properly due to himself. And, harbouring this grievance, he decided to denude his own unhappy country of anything that might remind anybody of Mandela’s legacy. Christopher Hitchens, Article Slate 21st April 2008, ‘Mandela Envy: Is Robert Mugabe’s Lawless Misrule Founded in Jealousy?’
Mugabe wasn’t human at all. You couldn’t warm to him as a person. You could admire his skills and intellect and so on, but he was an awfully slippery sort of person – reptilian, as I say. Lord Carrington
With his poor childhood development record, even minor criticism would be experienced as a wound by Mugabe. He is a person who cannot tolerate difference. Being profoundly doubtful about himself, he is oversensitive to the idea that he is not as good as everyone else. People are either with him or against him. Differences of opinion are provocative and hurtful to Mugabe, who may think that compromise reduces him. The closer a compromise comes to his emotional self, the more he resists it. Heidi Holland, Dinner with Mugabe
Protesting against new media laws which will criminalise false or inaccurate reporting. Killing Magabe, JourneyMan TV 2002
On the eve of a presidential election Robert Mugabe is displaying more than a politician’s customary fixation with media bias. ibid.
We expose the plan to kill Robert Mugabe, we reveal the people behind it and the most troubling part of this plot – their motives. ibid.
For the past twelve months Mugabe has accused the MDC of waging a terror campaign backed by British Intelligence to destabilize Zimbabwe. ibid.