There, he was a frequent protester of Robert Mugabe, who in 1980 became president of the landlocked southern African country. In recent years, Mugabe has solidified his reputation as a malicious despot—rigging elections to stay in power, destroying 700,000 homes of those who support his opposition, and presiding over a catastrophic economy that has the highest inflation rate in the world. Upwards of 3 million Zimbabweans have fled Mugabe's rule. One of those refugees was Herbert Abdul, who says he was jailed numerous times in Zimbabwe, where police beat the soles of his feet with batons and forced him to sing songs in praise of Mugabe.