By the thousands upon thousands, the people thronged the streets, waving banners, chanting slogans. A long-awaited future was fast approaching their land, Zimbabwe. One name was on all their lips: Robert Mugabe.

But this was not the huge crowd that flowed through Harare, the country’s capital, on Saturday, clamoring for Mr. Mugabe and his wife, Grace, to go. It was a jubilant crowd of 150,000 that welcomed Mr. Mugabe as a hero from his headquarters-in-exile in neighboring Mozambique in January 1980.

His return came at the start of a roller-coaster transition from white minority rule in Britain’s last African colony to an independent Zimbabwe.

Image Alan Cowell, in his 1980 press pass from Zimbabwe.

In the weeks that followed his return, Mr. Mugabe survived assassination attempts, threatened to walk away from the peace deal reached under British auspices in London in late 1979 and won a landslide victory in elections that paved the way for independence on April 18, 1980.