When Mugabe first came to power he was a poster-child for the left. A professed Maoist, who at least briefly seemed to promise a secure place in the economy for the white farmers (the backbone of the country's agriculture), he got good press in the "west." Then it turned out that he was indeed a Maoist both in profession and in practice, and not only that, he held homosexuals in less than high regard. He survives because his neighbors, like Mbecki in South Africa, are loathe to criticise. Indeed, South Africa will be the next Zimbabwe.
Funny how the gays, never have anything bad to say about Castro and Mugabe, even though their regimes are the most repressive against homosexuals on the planet.