Kingdom, power, glory: Mugabe, Zanu and the quest for supremacy, 1960-1987

by Stuart Doran

The early years of Zimbabwe’s independence were blighted by conflict and bloodshed, culminating in the Gukurahundi massacres of 1983 and 1984. Historian Stuart Doran explores these events in unprecedented detail, drawing on thousands of previously unpublished documents, including classified records from Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, apartheid South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada.

This groundbreaking book charts the development of an intense rivalry between two nationalist parties—Robert Mugabe’s Zanu and Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu—and reveals how Zanu’s victory in the elections of 1980 was followed by a carefully orchestrated five-year plan, driven by Mugabe, which sought to smash all forms of political opposition and impose a one-party state.

Doran shows not only what happened during Zimbabwe’s darkest chapter, but also why this cataclysm occurred. In an expansive narrative saturated with new findings, he documents a culture of political intolerance in which domination and subjugation became the only options, and traces the rise of the key proponents of this supremacist ideology.

Kingdom, power, glory: Mugabe, Zanu and the quest for supremacy, 1960–1987 is the most comprehensive history of Zimbabwe’s formative years and is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the Mugabe regime, then and now.

Genres: History, Africa

1098 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2017

Reviews

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blown away. A really formidable summary of little-discussed subjects, with thought-provoking analysis (and, thankfully, not much bias). Highly recommended if you are interested in Zimbabwean politics.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential to understanding the party conflicts

[Ed Stoddard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This door-stopper is simply superb. Doran is a master historian and he has written what I am sure is the definitive account of the Matabeleland geonocide of the 1980s and Zanu-PF's ruthless rise to political supremacy under Robert Mugabe. I had not realised that a one-party state had been such an explicit goal of Mugabe in the 1980s and how that decade came to define Zanu-PF and its subsequent history which I began covering as a journalist in the late 1990s.
It remains telling in my view that the death of Cecil the Lion in 2015 generated more outrage in the West than the killing of tens of thousands of Black Zimbabweans in that same region in the 1980s by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade. Mugabe had met the North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung in 1980 at the funeral of the Yugoslavian strongman Tito and it seems that a sinister collaboration was struck there.
Zanu-PF in the 21st century - now under Emmerson Mnangagwa whose hands are stained with blood from the 1980s - has firm roots in this initial reign of terror. The Zanu cock still crows. For how long remains to be seen ...

[Elton Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a month of reading, I’ve forgotten the parts I have issues with. I guess the good parts are just more memorable. Of course as someone who has heard these stories a million times in a million different ways, I was tempted to wish for a shorter version which might attract more readers but I have to admit, I can’t see what you’d take out!

[Marvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional work on the whole party history of Zanu and Zapu, explaining from the first anti-colonial movements very rich in detail the development of Zimbabwe under Mugabe's reign the split he initiated in the Zimbabweans society, leading to a nearly genocide.