Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe, who was once feted as an independence hero but whose 37-year rule left his country deeply divided and nearly broke, has died at the age of 95.
To his loyal supporters, he remained until his death the revered leader who ushered in independence after bringing an end to white-minority rule. But to his critics, Mugabe was the caricature of an African dictator who oppressed his opponents and ruined a country to retain power, which he was forced to relinquish, at the age of 93, in 2017.
Rumors had swirled around the health of the ex-president, who spent months in a hospital in Singapore earlier this year. Details of what ailed him were a closely guarded secret.
Mugabe — who infamously claimed that “only God” could ever remove him from office — was deposed in a coup in 2017, when members of his own party turned against him after he dismissed his longtime ally, then-vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, to make way for his much younger wife Grace.
Source: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe dies
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