The Black Robespierre, as he became known, put white fears at rest - speaking of reconciliation and joint enterprise.
"If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend," he told a relieved white population. "If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds me to you."
Twenty years later, Mr Mugabe is known the world over as a political demagogue, someone who, in a bid to cling to power, turned back on his promises and drove his nation into the ground.
Born in 1924, Robert Mugabe was one of the six children of a Malawian father and a Shona mother. He was educated in Roman Catholic missionary schools before moving to South Africa's Fort Hare University for the first of his seven degrees.
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