Zimbabwe is a landlocked sovereign state located in southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. It borders South Africa to the south, Botswana and Namibia to the west, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east and northeast. The capital and largest city is Harare. A country of roughly 13 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most commonly used. Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, when his ZANU-PF party won the elections following the end of white minority rule; he has been the president of Zimbabwe since 1987. Under Mugabe’s authoritarian regime, the state security apparatus has dominated the country and been responsible for widespread human rights violations. Mugabe has maintained the revolutionary socialist rhetoric from the Cold War era, blaming Zimbabwe’s economic woes on conspiring Western capitalist countries. Burnished by his anti-imperialist credentials, contemporary African political leaders have been reluctant to criticise Mugabe, though Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called him «a cartoon figure of an archetypal African dictator». (Source: Wikipedia)
