HARARE (Reuters) — Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who led the former Rhodesia to independence 21 years ago, is fighting for his political life in a presidential election which was set on Wednesday for March 9 and 10. An austere Jesuit-educated guerrilla chief, he is an eloquent speaker who is regarded by many as a polished political commissar who can work up the crowds and rally support even in the most difficult circumstances. But critics say the Zimbabwean leader has resorted to using “cheerleaders and musclemen” <\m> in the form of self-styled war veterans and the ZANU-PF Women’s League <\m> to drown out discordant voices and force party rebels into line.

Those musclemen include his loyal security forces, who on Wednesday signalled that they would not accept a victory by the opposition, led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. Analysts say Mugabe’s popularity has slid along with the economy, which is on the brink of collapse in the face of a chronic shortage of hard currency and fuel, dwindling investment, soaring inflation and unemployment.

Mugabe plunged his country into turmoil in April, 2000 with radical plans to seize white farms for blacks, 20 months after dragging Zimbabwe into a costly and unpopular foreign war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While his pursuit of land for peasant farmers seemed morally unshakeable, opposition critics and some within his own party saw it as a cynical ploy to hang on to power.

The land-grab campaign has been accompanied by violence in which at least 31 people, mostly supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were killed ahead of parliamentary polls narrowly won by ZANU-PF in June 2000.

Mugabe has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980. But his grip was seriously shaken in February, 2000 when he lost a referendum on a draft constitution which his opponents said was tailored to consolidate his authority.

He lost further ground in June after his ZANU-PF narrowly beat the MDC despite the violence blamed on his supporters. Now at the nadir of his political career, Mugabe has threatened war against Britain, run a virulent campaign against homosexuality and spoken of a global conspiracy against him. He has also challenged white farmers to surrender their land or leave the country and defied several court orders to evict liberation war veterans occupying their property.

His admirers insist that he is <\m> as his ZANU-PF party officially portrays him <\m> “a consistent revolutionary leader” demonised by the West for refusing to be reduced to a puppet. Mugabe spent ten years in jail for fighting white rule in Rhodesia and defeated rival liberation leaders in 1980 to become the country’s first democratically elected leader.

A seven-year bush war ended in a negotiated settlement with Britain. Mugabe became the country’s first president in 1987 after rewriting the independence constitution, and consolidated his power that year when he crushed a seven-year armed rebellion in Matabeleland province. There was a world outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians.

Critics say Mugabe has crippled southern Africa’s second biggest economy and prefers to travel rather than attend to issues at home. Mugabe, an ascetic teetotaller, married his ex-secretary, Grace Marufu, in 1995, three years after the death of his Ghanaian-born wife, Sally. He already had two children with Grace before Sally died and their third child was born in 1997.

Mugabe initially preached racial reconciliation, but now blames whites, about one percent of the 12.5 million population, for Zimbabwe’s woes. He says blacks have no moral obligation to pay for acquired white farms, saying the land was stolen from them by British colonialists in the 1890s.