Mugabe had been receiving treatment in a hospital in Singapore since April. He was ousted in a military coup in 2017 after 37 years in power. He died far from home, bitter, lonely, and humiliated - an epic life, with the shabbiest of endings.
Mugabe spent more than a decade in prison without trial, for criticizing the white government in Rhodesia. In 1973, while still in prison, he was chosen as president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu), of which he was a founding member.
The country he finally led to independence was one of the continent's most promising, and for years Zimbabwe more or less flourished. But when the economy faltered, Mugabe lost his nerve. He implemented a catastrophic land reform program. Zimbabwe quickly slid into hyperinflation, isolation, and political chaos. The security forces kept Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF, in power - mostly through terror. But eventually even the army turned against him, and pushed him out.
Few nations have ever been so bound, so shackled, to one man. For decades, Mugabe was Zimbabwe: a ruthless, bitter, sometimes charming man - who helped ruin the land he loved. In 2000, he seized land from white owners, and in 2008, used violent militias to silence his political opponents during an election.
He famously declared that only God could remove him from office. He was eventually forced into sharing power in 2009 amid economic collapse, installing rival Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister. In 2017, amid concerns that he was grooming his wife Grace as his successor, the army - his long-time ally - turned against the president and forced him to step down.
By that time, Mugabe and his wife Grace had built up a huge personal fortune and property empire while their countrymen suffered in the starvation and grinding poverty as a result of his brutal and incompetent regime.
Diplomatic cables from 2001 estimated the family wealth at that time to be more than $1billion, including six residences and a series of farms around the country. The cables also revealed that an engineering firm chaired by Mugabe's nephew had won a contract to build a new airport terminal in Harare.
The controversial land seizures which the Zimbabwean President claimed would distribute land to poor black people also boosted the Mugabes' own property empire, while causing economic crisis. Land reform was supposed to take much of the country's most fertile land - owned by about 4,500 white descendants of mainly British and South African colonial-era settlers - and redistribute it to poor black people.
Instead, Mugabe gave prime farms to ruling party leaders, party loyalists, security chiefs, relatives and cronies. Many of the most profitable farms ended up in the hands of well-connected public figures including Mugabe's wife, Grace. Robert Mugabe was reported at the time to have given 15 of the stolen farms to himself.
On top of that, the Mugabes bought a $4.9 million villa in Hong Kong in 2008, just as his reign appeared under threat. Grace Mugabe was known for her shopping and holiday trips to Asia, including Hong Kong and Bangkok, and earned the nickname 'Gucci Grace'. Grace owns vast tracks of land in Mazowe, some 20 miles north east of Harare, and is also believed to own houses in South Africa, Dubai and Singapore. Reports of Grace's corruption, lavish spending and explosive temper earned her the title 'Dis-Grace' - and eyebrows were raised in 2014 when she gained a PhD in three months.
Mugabe's farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa's most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation. Inflation reached billions of per cent at the height of the crisis before the local currency was scrapped in favour of the US dollar.
Mugabe was regarded as one of the world's most controversial political leaders. According to the Black Scholar journal, "depending on who you listen to ... Mugabe is either one of the world's great tyrants or a fearless nationalist who has incurred the wrath of the West." He has been widely described as a "dictator", a "tyrant", and a "threat", and has been referred to as one of Africa's "most brutal" leaders. At the same time he continued to be regarded as a hero in many third world countries and received a warm reception when traveling throughout Africa. For many in Southern Africa, he remained one of the "grand old men" of the African liberation movement.
George Walden, one of the British negotiators at the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 which ended white-minority rule, said Mugabe was a "true monster".
The agreement "turned out rather well... and looked good for a while", but Mugabe later became "a grossly corrupt, vicious dictator", he said.
Zimbabwean Senator David Coltart, once labelled "an enemy of the state" by Mugabe, said his legacy had been marred by his adherence to violence as a political tool. "He was always committed to violence, going all the way back to the 1960s... he was no Martin Luther King," he told the BBC. "He never changed in that regard."
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