Martin Meredith takes as the epigraph to this book a 1976 quote from Robert Mugabe: “Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have shall have been the product of the gun. The gun that produces the vote should remain its security officer — its guarantor." That was before Mugabe came to power in 1980 and it was clear that, like Chairman Mao, he saw power as proceeding from the barrel of a gun. Meredith makes it clear in his book that Mugabe still believes in this power and has not hesitated to use it.