Mugabe

No other African politician is quite as polarizing a figure as Robert Mugabe. Christoph Marx offers an unvarnished and considered account of the life of this dictator, who is as intelligent as he is unscrupulous and is driving his country to ruin. Whereas in the West, Mugabe is regarded as the prototype of an African despot, he still receives an astonishingly positive response in Africa despite his decades-long tyranny over Zimbabwe and the destruction of the country. But also in Europe, Mugabe was heralded for a long time as a liberator. The idea that he is a fallen revolutionary still persists. Christoph Marx paints a new picture of Mugabe and demonstrates that this supposed beacon of hope was from the very beginning willing to use any means to satisfy his all-consuming desire for power. Christoph Marx is a professor of Non-European history at the University of Duisburg-Essen.