Robert Mugabe is turning 90 and a weekend of
celebrations is planned in Zimbabwe to celebrate the president's long
life. Born in the village of Kutama, south-west of the capital, he was
educated by Jesuits and went on to become a teacher before joining the
liberation struggle, spending 11 years in prison and becoming Zimbabwe's
first leader in 1980.
Here are nine things you may not know about him - and which may hold the key to his longevity.
1) Exercise and traditional food
"I fall sick if I don't exercise," Mr Mugabe said three years
ago. Needing little sleep, he gets up between 04:00 and 05:00 every
morning to exercise while, according to a close source, listening to the
BBC World Service. But he's not fond of the gym machines his wife has
installed in state house and
prefers to follow his own regime: "In prison we had no equipment, we just had ourselves and that's what I still do today."
Another secret to his long life may be that he prefers his sadza -
Zimbabwe's staple food - to be made the traditional way from unrefined
grains, which is much healthier than the ubiquitous white version of the
maize dish. Plus he doesn't smoke, although is known to have some wine
with dinner.
2) Resurrection
Despite constant rumours of ill health -
a Wikileaks cable suggested he has prostate cancer
- his health and political career appear robust. Cataracts are his only
confirmed ailment - he had an operation to remove one this week. "I
have died many times - that's where I have beaten Christ. Christ died
once and resurrected once," he said when he turned 88.
3) Great cricket fan
He has long professed his love of cricket. The patron of the
Zimbabwe Cricket association, his official residence is right next to
the Harare Sports Club, which allows the president to keep a watchful
eye on the wicket during national matches.
"Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen," Mr Mugabe said
several years after Zimbabwe became independent. " I want everyone to
play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen."
4) Bad loser
As a boy, Robert Mugabe was a "keen and good" tennis player,
said a student teacher at the Catholic mission where he went to school.
But when he lost he would throw his racket onto the ground. "You would
see his head fall and his shoulders drop down and he would leave the
court without saying anything to anybody," Brother Kazito Bute told
Heidi Holland in her book Dinner With Mugabe.
He's
admitted he was a poor footballer when young, but now enjoys watching
the game, being a self-confessed Chelsea and Barcelona fan. "When I
watch soccer, I do not want anyone to disturb me,"
he said in 2012.
"Even my wife knows where to sit because while they are scoring in the
field I will also be scoring at home, kicking everything in front of
me."
5) Prefers Cliff Richard to Bob Marley
The late Zimbabwean politician Edgar Tekere told the BBC's
Brian Hungwe that when organising the independence celebrations in 1980,
Mr Mugabe wasn't keen on having Bob Marley perform. The
prime-minister-in-waiting is said to have stated that British pop star
Cliff Richard was much more to his taste. Journalist Wilf Mbanga, who
knew Mr Mugabe well in the 1970 and 1980s, said country singer Jim
Reeves was another favourite of the president.
Others have speculated that Mr Mugabe would have wanted the
more clean-cut Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff to perform at the festivities
on 18 April 1980. His dislike of Rastafarians is well-known - he once
warned young Zimbabweans: "In Jamaica, they have freedom to smoke
marijuana, the men are always drunk. Men want to sing and do not go to
colleges, some then dreadlock their hair. Let's not go there."
6) Snappy dresser
Saville row suits, with matching tie and handkerchief, are
what he is most comfortable in - and were his trademark until his former
spin doctor Jonathan Moyo gave him a makeover in the early 2000s and he
started campaigning in brightly coloured shirts emblazoned with his
face and sports caps. Now his signature has inspired a
designer fashion range.
But his Zimbabwean tailor Khalil "Solly" Parbhoo says: "He
still dresses like an English gentleman - that's always been his style."
He told Heidi Holland: "His suits were always made in London or I think
somewhere in Malaysia, now that he isn't welcome in Britain anymore."
7) Admires Kwame Nkrumah
Mr Mugabe's political awakening happened while in Ghana, where
he was a teacher and met his first wife, Sally Hayfron. He arrived a
year after pan-Africanist politician Kwame Nkrumah had led the Gold
Coast to independence in 1957, the first sub-Saharan country to throw
off the shackles of colonial rule. He said he was inspired by their
liberation encapsulated in Ghana's Highlife music.
On his return home two years later, he began politicising
people. "I started telling people… how free the Ghanaians were, and what
the feeling was in a newly independent African state,"
he said in an interview in 2003.
"I told them also about Nkrumah's own political ideology and his
commitment that unless every inch of African soil was free, then Ghana
would not regard itself as free."
8) A man of many degrees
In total Mr Mugabe has seven degrees, first graduating from
South Africa's University of Fort Hare, where Nelson Mandela studied,
with a bachelor of arts. He did his other degrees by distance learning -
two of them while he was in prison - in administration, education,
science and law.
He has also boasted of leading a party with "degrees in
violence" - in a warning to trade unionists before strikes in 1998. A
violent crackdown on opposition activists amid the political turmoil of
the last decade has led several universities to revoke honorary degrees
awarded to him for his achievements. Queen Elizabeth II also
stripped him of his honorary knighthood as "a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe".
9) Had a child aged 73
He has three children with his second wife Grace Marufu, his
former secretary. The couple's third child, Chatunga, was born in 1997, a
year after they were married.
His first son, Nhamodzenyika, died of malaria at the age of
three in Ghana. Mr Mugabe, then a prisoner of the Rhodesian government,
was refused permission to join his wife Sally in Accra for the funeral.
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