FACTBOX: Facts about Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe

(Reuters) - Here some facts about Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe:

* Once hailed as a model African democrat, Mugabe has held fast to power for years despite a deepening political and economic crisis that critics blame on his policies.

* Mugabe was born in February 1924 on the Kutama Mission northwest of Harare and educated by Jesuits. He earned seven university degrees, three while in prison.

* Mugabe was jailed for 10 years in 1964 for opposing white minority rule. A guerrilla war began in 1972 against Ian Smith's white government of then-Rhodesia.

* Mugabe became leader of the ZANU liberation movement in the mid-1970s after his release from jail.

* The renamed ZANU-PF won independence elections in 1980 and Mugabe became prime minister. He took office as president in 1987 following a change in the constitution.

* In 2000, Mugabe tasted defeat when voters in a referendum rejected a constitution that would have given him more power. He turned on the small white minority, blaming them.

* He pushed legislation through parliament allowing his government to seize more than half the white-owned farms. Self-styled war veterans occupied many other farms, often with violence.

* Mugabe was elected to his third term as president in 2002 but his crackdown against the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and other opponents, including journalists, increased his international isolation.

* Mugabe's party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in the March 2008 elections. Official results showed that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, of the MDC, also beat Mugabe in the presidential elections, but not by enough to avoid a run-off which is due to take place on Friday.

* Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off on June 22 saying a free and fair poll was impossible.

* Since the March vote, Mugabe has dismissed international condemnation of violence against the opposition and has vowed to extend his 28 years in power.