page_title: Robert Mugabe
section_title: Economic decline: 1995–2000
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Mugabe / President of Zimbabwe / Economic decline: 1995–2000
context_page_description: Robert Gabriel Mugabe was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front, from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.
  Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a schoolteacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered by white minority rule of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an independent state controlled by the black majority. After making anti-government comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominately white government.
context_section_description: Over the course of the 1990s, Zimbabwe's economy steadily deteriorated. By 2000, living standards had declined from 1980; life expectancy was reduced, average wages were lower, and unemployment had trebled. By 1998, unemployment was almost at 50%. As of 2009, three to four million Zimbabweans—the greater part of the nation's skilled workforce—had left the country. In 1997 there were growing demands for pensions from those who had fought for the guerrilla armies in the revolutionary war, and in August 1997 Mugabe put together a pension package that would cost the county Z$4.2 billion. To finance this pension scheme, Mugabe's government proposed new taxes, but a general strike was called in protest in December 1997; amid protest from ZANU–PF itself, Mugabe's government abandoned the taxes. In January 1998, riots about lack of access to food broke out in Harare; the army was deployed to restore order, with at least ten killed and hundreds injured.
  Mugabe increasingly blamed the country's economic problems on Western nations and the white Zimbabwean minority, who still controlled most of its commercial agriculture, mines, and manufacturing industry. He called on supporters "to strike fear in the hearts of the white man, our real enemy", and accused his black opponents of being dupes of the whites. Amid growing internal opposition to his government, he remained determined to stay in power. He revived the regular use of revolutionary rhetoric and sought to reassert his credentials as an important revolutionary leader.
  Mugabe also developed a growing preoccupation with homosexuality, lambasting it as an "un-African" import from Europe. He described gay people as being "guilty of sub-human behaviour", and of being "worse than dogs and pigs". This attitude may have stemmed in part from his strong conservative values, but it was strengthened by the fact that several ministers in the British government were gay. Mugabe began to believe that there was a "gay mafia" and that all of his critics were homosexuals. Critics also accused Mugabe of using homophobia to distract attention from the country's problems. In August 1995, he was due to open a human rights-themed Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare but refused to do so until a stall run by the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe was evicted.
  In 1996, Mugabe was appointed chair of the defence arm of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Without consulting parliament, in August 1998 he ordered Zimbabwean troops into the Democratic Republic of the Congo to side with President Laurent Kabila in the Second Congo War. He initially committed 3000 troops to the operation; this gradually rose to 11,000. He also persuaded Angola and Namibia to commit troops to the conflict. Involvement in the war cost Zimbabwe an approximate US$1 million a day, contributing to its economic problems. Opinion polls demonstrated that it was unpopular among Zimbabwe's population. However, several Zimbabwean businesses profited, having been given mining and timber concessions and preferential trade terms in minerals from Kabila's government.
  In January 1999, 23 military officers were arrested for plotting a coup against Mugabe. The government sought to hide this, but it was reported by journalists from The Standard. The military subsequently illegally arrested the journalists and tortured them. This brought international condemnation, with the EU and seven donor nations issuing protest notes. Lawyers and human rights activists protested outside parliament until they were dispersed by riot police, and the country's Supreme Court judges issued a letter condemning the military's actions. In response, Mugabe publicly defended the use of extra-legal arrest and torture.
  In 1997, Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister of the UK after 18 years of Conservative rule. His Labour government expressed reticence toward restarting the land resettlement payments promised by the Lancaster House Agreement, with minister Clare Short rejecting the idea that the UK had any moral obligation to fund land redistributio
caption: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom Mugabe had a particularly antagonistic relationship
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