Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe
Age: 87
Assumed office: 12/31/87
Mugabe’s 24-year reign is reportedly marked with serial election rigging, mass media control, and the constant prospect of starvation. The nation that was famous worldwide for being one of the few African countries to violently overthrow its white European rulers in the former Rhodesia now suffers under the heavy hand of its own dictator. Barry Bearak, a “New York Times” journalist who had been imprisoned in the state’s capital in 2008, reported that “power had flourished through methodical cruelty, including the murder of thousands of people … as he and cronies then acquired lavish mansions and enormous bank accounts.”
