Robert Mugabe, the bush war guerrilla who led Zimbabwe to independence and crushed his foes during nearly four decades of rule as his country descended into poverty, hyperinflation and unrest, died on Friday. He was 95.

Key points: Robert Mugabe was prime minister and president of Zimbabwe for 37 years from 1980

Robert Mugabe was prime minister and president of Zimbabwe for 37 years from 1980 He brought to an end to minority-white rule, but later ruled with an iron grip

He brought to an end to minority-white rule, but later ruled with an iron grip The leader is accused of multiple human rights violations and was ousted in 2017

Zimbabwe's former prime minister and president was one of the most polarising figures in his continent's history, a giant of African liberation, whose rule finally ended in ignominy when he was overthrown by his own army.

He died in Singapore, where he had long received medical treatment.

WARNING: This story contains graphic images.

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Addressing the nation via a televised speech, President Emmerson Mnangagwa — the man who overthrew Mugabe in 2017 — elevated the former president to a 'national hero', which is Zimbabwe's highest post-humous honour.

"A veteran nationalist and a pan-Africanist fighter, comrade Mugabe bequeaths a rich and indelible legacy of tenacious adherence to principle on the collective rights of Africa and Africans in general and in particular the rights of the people of Zimbabwe, for whom he gave his all to help free," he said.

Abroad, others said his legacy was overshadowed by the harm he did to his people.

"We of course express our condolences to those who mourn, but know that for many he was a barrier to a better future," a spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

"Under his rule the people of Zimbabwe suffered greatly as he impoverished their country and sanctioned the use of violence against them."

'The thinking man's guerrilla'

In the late 1970s, Mugabe (right) was instrumental in forging an independent Zimbabwe free from white-minority rule. ( AP: Dieter Endlicher, file )

Born on February 21, 1924, on a Roman Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa's University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism.

Returning to then-Southern Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics and was jailed for a decade for opposing white rule.

Rhodesia's rulers fought international calls for multi-racial democracy from the 1960s. ( Picryl: US Library of Congress / Leon Klayman / Wilfred Owen Brigade )

When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral.

After his release, he rose to lead the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army guerrilla movement in the 1970s, earning a reputation among his countrymen and fellow African leaders as "the thinking man's guerrilla".

Mugabe held seven degrees, three earned behind bars as a political prisoner.

In 1980, following a campaign plagued by violence and claims of vote-rigging, he was sworn in as prime minister, bringing an end to white rule — one of the last African states to do so after decolonisation began from the late 1950s.

He later abolished the position of prime minister and assumed the new role — and additional powers — of president.

Rape, torture and executions followed independence

Robert Mugabe is sworn in as Zimbabwe's first executive president by former president Canaan Banana. ( AP: Peter Minterbach, file photo )

Just three years after independence, he sent the army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade into the homeland of the Ndebele people to crush loyalists of his rival, Joshua Nkomo.

Human rights groups estimate as many as 20,000 people died in a two-year purge that came to be known in the Shona language as Gukurahundi: "The early rain that washes away the chaff."

The opposition called it genocide.

Villages were destroyed wholesale, according to a 1997 report by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, titled Breaking the Silence.

Victims were raped, tortured and executed, some forced to dig their own graves or thrown down wells.

Many years later, Mugabe acknowledged the episode was "very bad" and blamed it on renegade soldiers.

Peter Tatchell — a British man who twice attempted to make a citizens arrest of Mugabe — said it was sad that the strongman died without ever facing justice.

"Robert Mugabe was a liberation hero who turned tyrant," he said.

"He massacred more black Africans than even the evil apartheid regime in South Africa."



Amnesty International echoed Mr Tatchell's sentiment, who said Mugabe eroded his initially positive track record.

"While casting himself as the saviour of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe inflicted lasting damage upon its people and its reputation," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for Southern Africa.

Turning Africa's bread basket into an economic basket case

A Robert Mugabe poster used in Zimbabwe's 2008 elections with new banknotes reflecting the country's hyperinflation. ( Supplied )

From 1980, his socialist policies saw Zimbabwe's once reasonably stable economy take a dive, sending much of the population into extreme poverty thanks to hyperinflation and food shortages.

In fiery speeches throughout his rule he painted his actions as a just response to a racist colonial legacy, with his most important priority being land reform launched in 2000.

This was supposed to take much of the country's most fertile land — owned by about 4,500 white descendants of mainly British and South African colonial-era settlers — and redistribute it to poor black Zimbabweans.

When he failed to change the constitution to allow seizure without compensation, his followers stormed farms.

Some white farmers fled the country, while many who stayed were tortured and murdered, along with any black workers.

Subsequently, output nosedived and southern Africa's breadbasket could barely feed itself.

By 2008, the economy experienced 500 billion per cent inflation and GDP fell by 40 per cent.

A year later, the central bank announced it was introducing a 100-trillion-dollar note — worth around $43 at the time.

By April 2009, the Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned as an official currency, with the country's Reserve Bank legalising foreign currencies for transactions.

At this time, Mugabe pinned the country's economic woes to a Western conspiracy.

Photos showing the injuries sustained by Zimbabwean farmer Ian Kay during the forced seizure of his land. ( ABC News: Siobhan Heanue )

The demise of an African dictator

Despite earning respect as a freedom fighter, Mugabe was later viewed as cartoonish dictator. ( AP: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi )

The ageing president had become a cartoonish figure of the stereotypical African dictator.

As Zimbabwe's economy tanked Mugabe was regularly criticised for his lavish lifestyle, with his second wife Grace Mugabe labelled 'Gucci Grace'.

He would throw himself lavish birthday parties with huge cakes as the centrepiece although much of his country was starving, and he would wear colourful shirts emblazoned with pictures of himself.

It was rumoured he had botox injections, and in 2008 WikiLeaks cables revealed that he was suffering from prostate cancer and had only a few years to live.

In that year, Zimbabweans were given the chance to vote Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but he eventually withdrew his presidential bid following killings of his supporters by supporters of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.

South Africa, Zimbabwe's neighbour to the south, later squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mr Mugabe's grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service.

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Mugabe was ultimately ousted by his own armed forces in November 2017, prompting wild celebrations across the country of 13 million.

He demonstrated his stubbornness to the last, refusing to accept his expulsion from his own party and clinging on for a week until Parliament started to impeach him after the de facto coup.

For Mugabe, it was an "unconstitutional and humiliating" act of betrayal by his party and people, and left him a broken man.

But throughout his life, Mugabe always defended his legacies against what he called white imperialism, even once hitting back at being compared to Hitler.

"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," he said.

"If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold."

ABC/wires