Emmerson Mnangagwa

Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa was born at Zvishavane and grew up partly in Northern Rhodesia, where his family moved after his father fell out with the colonial authorities. He joined the nationalist movement as a teenager and was among the first group of Zimbabweans sent abroad for military training, in Egypt and then in China — the Crocodile Gang, as the unit he fought with was known, from which his own nickname comes.

He was captured in 1965 after blowing up a locomotive near Fort Victoria. He was sentenced to death; the sentence was commuted because the court accepted he was under twenty-one, and he served ten years, much of it at Khami prison alongside the men who would later run the country. He used the time to take law degrees by correspondence through the University of London and Zambia, and qualified as a lawyer after his release.

He went into exile in Zambia and Mozambique, became Robert Mugabe's assistant and then his special assistant during the liberation war, and returned in 1980 into the first cabinet. Over the next thirty-seven years he held state security, justice, defence, finance, housing and rural housing, and the speakership of parliament, and was for long periods the second most powerful figure in Zimbabwe.

When Mugabe dismissed him in November 2017 he fled the country; within a week the army had intervened, Mugabe had resigned, and Mnangagwa returned to be sworn in. He has been president since, winning contested elections in 2018 and 2023.