Robert Mugabe, the African revolutionary Marxist who became an icon of independence when he took over Zimbabwe has died. He turned Southern Rhodesia, the bread basket of the continent, into a byword for economic mismanagement and corruption, ruling for decades via rigged elections as he starved and tortured his own people. He was ousted in a coup in 2017 and replaced by his henchman Emmerson ‘the crocodile’ Mnangagwa, who hasn’t done much to recover the country’s fortunes.
Mugabe, born 21 February 1924, was a Sun Pisces with a Virgo Moon; and Uranus in Pisces in an adventurous and volatile square to an enthusiastic Mars Jupiter in Sagittarius. He had Saturn in Scorpio trine his Sun and widely trine Pluto in Cancer with his Sun opposition a Virgo North Node. And planets in all three Fire signs – Venus in Aries, Neptune in Leo and Mars Jupiter. So an excitable Water Fire personality and very Mutable.
Zimbabwe became independent at midnight on 18 April 1980 (London time) which puts a control-freak Pluto in the 10th opposition an Aries Sun as the driving rod of a Fire Grand Trine of the Sun trine Mars Node in Leo trine Neptune in Sagittarius, setting the scene for what followed. It did have the potential to be entrepreneurial and successful but consolidating power and corralling money into the hands of the few at the top became the only priority in what was effectively a gangster government.
The original Southern Rhodesia chart, 12 September 1923, had a Water Grand Trine of Jupiter trine Pluto trine Uranus, formed into a Kite by Uranus opposition Sun Venus in Virgo – which is less attention-demanding than the subsequent Zim chart, but harder working and more successful.
There was less overt apartheid in Southern Rhodesia when the colonialists were there but it was still massively unfair to the indigenous peoples despite the thriving economy. Just such a tragedy that independence brought them so much worse.
There’s sadly nothing much to suggest anything much will improve in the near future.