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President Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe is an enigmatic figure who has been in power for over three decades. He is a difficult subject to understand because his political life has attracted both admirers and critics. This book is the first of its kind to try and make sense of the meaning of Mugabe from an interdisciplinary vantage point. It poses the difficult question of what Mugabeism means. What emerges is Mugabe as colonial, nationalist, and postcolonial subject manifesting complex ambivalences, ambiguities, and contradictions. Mugabe is at once a liberator, Machiavellian dictator, champion of socio-economic justice, patriarch, pan-Africanist, anti-democrat, and an anti-imperialist revolutionary. He is at once a progenitor and undertaker of Zimbabwe. He is at once popular and unpopular. It is these meanings of Mugabe that are explored in this book.
