Zimbabwe assesses the so-called “legacy” of Robert Mugabe, who was the national leader for 37 years.The majority of comments focus on his metamorphose from a liberator to a dictator, ruining the future of many to benefit of few. The social media users point at the bitter irony of the situation of the leader who promised to improve Zimbabwe healthcare system, but ruined it instead, and ended his days in a foreign land, treated by foreign specialists.

However the health care was not the only endeavor, damaged by mismanagement. While reflecting upon Mugabe‘s ‘legacy’ commentators point out that his policies had devastating effect on all the endowments, degrading the economy from what universally was regarded as “jewel” to a current state of deprivation, with five million people risking hunger, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, calling for immediate humanitarian action.

During almost four decades of leadership, Mugabe kept the grip on power by the brutal repression of political opponents, established a culture of impunity for himself and his cronies, and his government implemented a series of policies that have had disastrous consequences for the nation, ruining the wealth accumulated by hard work of generations.

Since 1982, Amnesty International has been receiving reports of human rights violations and abuses by state security agents, targeting suspected of sympathising with Mugabe’s political opponents.

Human rights defenders, journalists,  dissidents and opposition party activists were imprisoned on politically motivated charges or under oppressive laws. Many were tortured, and some forcibly disappeared, or killed.