This is a book that is at least partially motivated by a pressing question for all scholar-activists interested in contemporary Southern Africa, that is, what happened to the progressive politics which informed liberation movements during the struggle? Roger Southall, eminently qualified to answer this question, provides a deeply researched comparative study that examines three leading liberation movements in order to come up with an explanation. The roots of this paradoxical situation, the pursuit of emancipatory politics during the liberation struggle and authoritarian practices in power, is to be found in the transformation of liberation movements into party machines. These post-liberation parties become sites of competitive accumulation by self-styled revolutionary elites who use their positions for recruitment, advancement and social formation. Another factor was the transitional arrangements themselves, especially the promulgation of a democratic constitution which ensured that the underlying political economy of settler colonialism remained intact. The focus of post-liberation struggles has become on dismantling constitutional barriers to party-led aggrandisement of the kind Southall documents in abundance.

As befitting a comparative study, variations in the history and conduct of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the Southwest Peoples Organisations (SWAPO) in Namibia and the Zimbabwean-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) in Zimbabwe are assessed in detail. The conscious narrative of common challenges to their authority in office provides the basis for the much-vaunted solidarity when confronted by external criticism. A bit more on the linkages between the liberation period, where some of the authoritarian habits and structures that accompanied the formation of militarised struggles conducted against white settler regimes took hold, and the post-liberation mobilisation would have been interesting to explore.

All in all, this is an important work of scholarship that provides a rich narrative with both significant empirical content and analytical depth. It is a disturbing portrait of the ‘slow death of liberation movements’ and a good starting point for considering what should be the next step for scholars and activists alike working on this once celebrated democratic bastion in Africa.