Robert Gabriel Mugabe once assured Zimbabwe's fleeing whites that "there is a place for you in the sun." Now his own place in the country he has ruled for 28 years is uncertain.
Mugabe was born in 1924, the son of a village carpenter in Zvimba, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Zimbabwe's capital Harare. As a child, he tended his grandfather's cattle, fished for bream in muddy water holes, played football and "boxed a lot," as he recalled later.
Few blacks at the time learned to write their names. But Mugabe went to school, where he was taught by Jesuit priests. Classmates described him as shy and bookish, a loner deeply attached to his mother and resentful of his absent father, according to Heidi Holland, author of "Dinner with Mugabe." 
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All About Zimbabwe • Robert Mugabe • Human Rights Watch