Robert Mugabe Profile

Robert Mugabe, 84, has been nothing if not tenacious in trying to cling on to power despite his long descent into pariah status for having wrecked what was once one of Africa's brightest hopes.

Mugabe made his name in the 1970s as a guerrilla leader fighting the white regime of Ian Smith. After months of negotiations, the 1979 Lancaster House agreement paved the way for Mugabe, leader of the Zanu-PF party, to take charge of what was then Rhodesia - which means he has been in power for almost three decades.

He initially built a coalition government with Joshua Nkomo, whose Zapu forces had also fought the Smith government. But the discovery of arms at Zapu-owned houses led to Nkomo's dismissal. A brutal crackdown on Zapu supporters followed, negating early political promises of unity and democracy.

Mugabe's authoritarian streak has hardened over the years: critics are dismissed as "traitors and sell-outs", terms that hark back to the guerrilla war, when such denunciations amounted to a death sentence.

In a long career, Mugabe's decision to push through forcible land seizures in 2000 will be seen as a particularly fateful one. The measure was designed to shore up his waning popularity and reward Zanu veterans of the independence struggle.

The strategy was politically cynical and economically disastrous. It wrecked what had been one of Africa's most diversified economies as land was seized from white farmers and handed over to political cronies, many of whom had no idea how to run a farm. Tobacco and food exports slumped and the economy plunged into free fall.

Mugabe rarely gives interviews to independent journalists but spoke for two-and-a half hours to Heidi Holland last December for her book, Dinner with Mugabe.

She concluded that Mugabe was profoundly out of touch, surrounded by sycophants too scared to tell him the truth about the dire state of Zimbabwe.

When Holland suggested that the economy was in a mess, Mugabe angrily insisted that Zimbabwe was "a hundred times better" than most African countries.

"Outside South Africa, what country is like Zimbabwe?" Mugabe said. "Even now. What is lacking now are goods on the shelves, perhaps, that's all. But the infrastructure is there. We have our mines, you see. We have our enterprises."

But when Mugabe finally fades from the scene, he will be able to boast of one supreme achievement. The former teacher can point to an education system that has given Zimbabwe the highest literacy rate in Africa, at 90% of the population.

For now, under the deal brokered by the South African president, Mugabe is not quite yet gone. The aging leader will remain president and continue to chair a cabinet, although opposition sources say it will be a largely consultative body and the real power will be with Tsvangirai.