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The withering of Robert Mugabe, as told by Australia’s Prime Ministers

The way incessant talk of China’s rivalry with the United States dominates the present turbulent world, it’s hard to conceive of an earlier time when Australia’s prime ministers devoted hours upon hours to the fate of far-off Zimbabwe. But the death on Friday of African independence hero-turned-tyrant Robert Mugabe was a reminder that in the days before the G20, APEC, or the East Asia Summit, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was Australia’s seat at the high table.

And it was at CHOGM that debate was so often dominated by Zimbabwe’s painful and bloody transition from white rule as Rhodesia in the late 1970s to the eventual recognition of the Mugabe regime’s vicious character in the early 2000s. Australia’s Malcolm Fraser played a key role in Commonwealth negotiations leading up to the 1979 Lancaster House talks and Zimbabwe’s independence, while John Howard was a member of the so-called “troika” with counterparts from Nigeria and South Africa in 2002 that saw Zimbabwe suspended.

Read more: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/withering-robert-mugabe-told-australia-s-prime-ministers

Robert Mugabe in 2013, having secured eight consecutive terms in power (Photo: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty)

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