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.

On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government.

Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also deteriorated.

[14] The family settled in a village about 11 kilometres (7 miles) away; the children were permitted to remain at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental home on weekends.

[35] Meanwhile, he gained a Bachelor of Education degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa,[36] and ordered a number of Marxist tracts—among them Karl Marx's Capital and Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England—from a London mail-order company.

[38] Guy Clutton-Brock, who knew Mugabe through this group, later noted that he was "an extraordinary young man" who could be "a bit of a cold fish at times" but "could talk about Elvis Presley or Bing Crosby as easily as politics".

[51] In July 1960, Takawira and two other NDP officials were arrested; in protest, Mugabe joined a demonstration of 7,000 people who planned to march from Highfield to the Prime Minister's office in Salisbury.

[72] There, the party leadership met Tanganyika's president, Julius Nyerere, who also dismissed the idea of a government-in-exile and urged ZAPU to organise their resistance to white minority rule within Southern Rhodesia itself.

[132] At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 1979, held in Lusaka, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher surprised delegates by announcing that the UK would officially recognize the country's independence if it transitioned to democratic majority rule.

[141] The ensuing Lancaster House Agreement called for all participants in the Rhodesian Bush War to agree to a ceasefire, with a British governor, Christopher Soames, arriving in Rhodesia to oversee an election in which the various factions could compete as political parties.

[159] The electoral campaign was marred by widespread voter intimidation, perpetrated by Nkomo's ZAPU, Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC), and Mugabe's ZANU–PF.

[184] A new leadership elite were formed, who often expressed their newfound status through purchasing large houses and expensive cars, sending their children to private schools, and obtaining farms and businesses.

Nkala subsequently detained over 100 ZAPU officials, including five of its MPs and the Mayor of Bulawayo, banned the party from holding rallies or meetings, closed all of their offices, and dissolved all of the district councils that they controlled.

[265] Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union argued that the proposed measures would wreck the country's economy, urging the government to instead settle landless blacks on the half-a-million acres of land that was either unproductive or state-owned.

[296] Lawyers and human rights activists protested outside parliament until they were dispersed by riot police,[296] and the country's Supreme Court judges issued a letter condemning the military's actions.

[357] The US and UK introduced a resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an arms embargo of Zimbabwe alongside an asset freeze and travel ban of Mugabe and other government figures; it was vetoed by Russia and China.

[392][393] In May 2017, Mugabe took a weeklong trip to Cancún, Mexico, ostensibly to attend a three-day conference on disaster risk reduction, eliciting criticism of wasteful spending from opposition figures.

[409] Late in December 2017, according to a government gazette, Mugabe was given full diplomatic status and, out of public funds, a five-bedroom house, up to 23 staff members, and personal vehicles.

[448] ZANU–PF claimed that it was influenced by Marxism–Leninism; Onslow and Redding stated that in contrast to the Marxist emphasis on the urban proletariat as the main force of socio-economic change, Mugabe's party accorded that role to the rural peasantry.

[455] Ndlovu-Gatsheni argued that since the mid-1990s, Mugabe's rhetoric and speeches came to be dominated by three main themes: an obsession with a perceived British threat to re-colonise Zimbabwe, to transfer the land controlled by white farmers to the black population, and issues of belonging and patriotism.

[457] David Blair stated that "Mugabe's collected writings amount to nothing more than crude Marxism, couched in the ponderous English of the mission school", remarking that they were heavily informed by Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Frantz Fanon, and displayed little originality.

[115] Blair noted that Mugabe's writings called for "command economics in a peasant society, mixed with anti-colonial nationalism", and that in this he held "the same opinions as almost every other African guerrilla leader" of that period.

[470] Heidi Holland suggested that due to his "dysfunctional" upbringing, Mugabe had a "fragile self-image",[471] describing him as "a man cut off from his feelings, devoid of ordinary warmth and humanity".

[170] Blair noted that at this period of his career, Mugabe displayed "genuine magnanimity and moral courage" despite his "intense personal reasons for feeling bitterness and hatred" toward the members of the former regime.

[494] Robert Mugabe Jr. and his younger brother, Chatunga, are known for posting their lavish lifestyle on social media, which drew accusations from opposition politician Tendai Biti that they were wasting Zimbabwean taxpayers' money.

[505] His strongholds of support were Zimbabwe's Shona-dominated regions of Mashonaland, Manicaland, and Masvingo, while he remained far less popular in the non-Shona areas of Matabeleland and Bulawayo,[263] and among the Zimbabwean diaspora living abroad.

[281] At the time of his 1980 election victory, Mugabe was internationally acclaimed as a revolutionary hero who was embracing racial reconciliation,[193] and for the first decade of his governance he was widely regarded as "one of post-colonial Africa's most progressive leaders".

[506] David Blair argued that while Mugabe did exhibit a "conciliatory phase" between March 1980 and February 1982, his rule was otherwise "dominated by a ruthless quest to crush his opponents and remain in office at whatever cost".

[507] In 2011, the scholar Blessing-Miles Tendi stated that "Mugabe is often presented in the international media as the epitome of the popular leader gone awry: the independence struggle hero who seemed initially a progressive egalitarian, but has gradually been corrupted through his attachment to power during a long and increasingly repressive spell in office.

[500] For many Africans, Mugabe exposed the double standards of Western countries; the latter had turned a blind eye to the massacre of over 20,000 black Ndebele civilians in the Gukarakundi but strongly censured the Zimbabwean government when a small number of white farmers were killed during the land seizures.