As for how it got to promoting Mugabe into turning one of the most prosperous nations in Africa into the new Weimar Germany, one interesting reading of the situ

As for how it got to promoting Mugabe into turning one of the most prosperous nations in Africa into the new Weimar Germany, one interesting reading of the situation: The Rhodesian Selous Scouts (the new, mixed race, elite force responsible for 3/4 of the enemy casualties during the Bush Wars) made the decision to go after the "moderate" party (ZAPU, led by Nkomo), weakening his troops shortly before the final election (where all Rhodesian troops were called back to the barracks and guarded by British troops). They correctly expected Mugabe to win the election, since he could take over the countryside with no opposition, and the plan was that he had such an awful reputation that the British would not allow the election result to stand, whereas they'd be fine with Nkomo. Unfortunately, they underestimated a. how much the British were annoyed with Ian Smith and UDI and b. how little they cared about Mugabe's true nature, and generally about the fate of the "natives" in their own colonies, just wanting to wrap up the whole thing as quickly as possible and stop being the centre of global attention. In fact you can trace Mugabe's rise to the assassination of the moderate, educated, highly competent leader of ZAPU and later ZANU, Herbert Chitepo, a national hero and the country's first black lawyer, by a former British SAS soldier working half on contract, half out of ideology for the Rhodesians. The assassination, which was followed by Rhodesian disinformation to make it look like it was a faction war, was supposed to seed dissent within the enemy camp. Instead, Mugabe took advantage of the chaos to emerge as the leader and the rest is history. For all we know, Chitepo could have been the African Lee Kuan Yew. The rise and fall of Rhodesia is one of the most fascinating parts of 20th century history and I really recommend getting acquainted with the period. If anybody has ZANU/ZAPU/ZANLA-side sources, I'd love to read them as I could find very little on the subject and much I heard from that point of view was from Zimbabweans whose family members were fighting on that side of the conflict.