Robert Mugabe
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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 (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), 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. The term Mugabeism has been used to refer to his policies which were rooted in nativism, anti-imperialism, and left-wing nationalism.
Living standards during his tenure in the 1980s were generally okay, however declined in the following decade as Mugabe's government implemented IMF policies. At the same time, ZANU-PF was under pressure from veterans and landless Zimbabweans to carry out land reform, which he finally did after years of delay when it looked like his party might lose elections. The land reform overall had a positive effect[1] but the country's economy nonetheless remained rather poor for over a decade. Mugabe was seen as incapable of doing much to change this, and the vast majority of ZANU-PF members on top of most other Zimbabweans approved of his ousting.