Robert Mugabe: Zimbabwe's veteran leader

Robert Mugabe has just turned 84 but despite his age he has lost none of his pugnacity. Campaigning for his sixth term as president, he returned once again to his obsession with colonialism.: "My people are my machine gun. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again."

Now widely seen as a tyrant, at the time of the struggle for independence from Britain, Mugabe was hailed in liberal circles as the thinking man's guerrilla. A teacher by profession, his political career began in the 1960s when he formed his National Democratic Party. He was jailed in 1964 for 10 years for fighting white minority rule. After his release he went into exile and formed the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance with Joshua Nkomo.

Ian Smith, the prime minister of Rhodesia, unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965. But a guerrilla war and crippling international sanctions eventually forced him to the negotiating table.

Mugabe was one of the signatories on the Lancaster House agreement. That the transition to majority - black - rule and gave Zimbabwe legal independence and a constitution. After 90 years of British rule the Union Jack was lowered for the last time at Salisbury, now Harare. Mugabe won elections supervised by London and became prime minister, naming Nkomo as interior minister.

But factional tensions were not far away and things quickly turned sour. However Mugabe's massacre of former rebel supporters of Nkomo, who were from a different ethnic group, went virtually uncommented on by the international community.

In 1987 Mugabe and his rival reconciled and merged their two parties. Mugabe then amended the constitution, abolished the post of prime minister and became president - with sweeping powers.

It all began to unravel for him in 2000, when he lost a referendum on a new constitution and launched land reforms which were to have disastrous consequences for Zimbabwe's economy.

Once one of the most respected leaders in Africa, Mugabe continues to cloak himself in the trappings of grandeur. But Zimbabwe itself has grown poorer and hungrier and for many ordinary people, the situation has reached breaking point.