“The one thing we will never allow anyone in the world to interfere with is our sovereignty.” Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former leader and once the world’s oldest head of state, has died at 95. Before his ouster in 2017, Mugabe was the only leader Zimbabweans had ever known since independence. And his 37-year rule defied the odds. Mugabe started as a celebrated leader of Zimbabwe’s liberation movement, but came to rule with an iron fist. To stay in power, he deployed tactics long used by dictators. Here’s how. In the early 1980s, Mugabe sent the military to crush a resistance movement. Over 10,000 people were killed, including many civilians. And in 2008, security forces and Mugabe loyalists attacked, intimidated or killed opposition supporters, forcing the opposition leader to quit the race. Mugabe went on to win the second round of the vote, but international pressure pushed him into a power-sharing government. In 2014, longtime Mugabe loyalist, Joice Majuru, was pushed out of his inner circle after Mugabe’s wife accused her of plotting a coup. Majuru’s husband, who is also part of Zimbabwe’s political royalty, had died a few years earlier in a mysterious fire that she says was an assassination by forces loyal to the president. In 2017, Mugabe fired his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing the way for Mrs. Mugabe to succeed him as president. In the early 2000s, Mugabe supported the seizure of white-owned farms in an effort to increase his popularity. Later, he said that the government could take farm land without paying compensation. And if anyone ever wants to protest in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has even raised the price of cellular data to prevent online organizing. Mugabe’s reign over Zimbabwe ended in 2017. And his death leaves a complicated legacy: a pariah who resorted to despotism later in life, but in many corners of Africa, he was an elder statesman, thanks to his liberation pedigree.