This is an engaging, pacy read, and it convincingly meets its stated aim: the production of ‘an intelligent book for the non-specialist reader’ about Southern Africa. ‘Southern Africa’ is a bit of a misnomer, for although the recent histories of Angola, Mozambique and Namibia are lightly sketched, the book is really about Zimbabwe and South Africa. Stephen Chan has been involved in Zimbabwe, in various capacities, for over thirty years; he has written books on Mugabe and Tsvangirai; and his decoding of the murky, fractious and increasingly brutal politics of ZANU-PF and the somewhat lumbering opposition of the MDC is highly informative.

Chan is also excellent on the strength, range and tenacity of the links between the two countries. He uses Cecil Rhodes’ great north road as a metaphor for the propinquity, overlapping histories and political similarities that bind their destinies so closely. Zimbabwe is New Zealand to South Africa's Australia according to Chan (who is from New Zealand): ‘there are deadly rivalries and separable identities, but the two understand each other with an intimacy that is uncanny’ (256). Within his narrative of the complex relations between two states and their societies is a nuanced and convincing sub-plot about the parts played by Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe. Chan's account of their personal and political exchanges is sharply observed and psychologically credible. The two leaders – intellectually confident, politically ruthless and emotionally limited – displayed a mutual understanding and empathy. Mbeki's public deference to the older man was real, but did not prevent him from composing a telling critique delivered in a 29-page letter to Mugabe.

Thabo Mbeki emerges from these pages as a tragically flawed figure, a ‘scholarly and aloof philosopher-king who despite all his faults was, with his dreams of Renaissance, one of the last great idealists of Africa’ (276). His macro-economic policy, GEAR, was not an error, a capitulation to neo-liberalism in a fit of absence of mind. Rather (Chan proposes) it was Mbeki's master plan for South Africa – and also a technocratic template for the rest of the continent: this is how you run a modern state; how you exercise agency in partnership with global capital; how you win respect for Africa. But if Mbeki was a visionary who had blind spots, Mugabe viewed the world through such distorting lenses as to blind him to reality. He was a nationalist leader – but willing to destroy his nation in order to own it, to drag Zimbabwe into a spiral of violence, vengeance and vehemence. While Chan is at pains not to replicate what he regards as an unthinking demonisation of the ZANU-PF leader in Western media and chancelleries, his judgement is pretty withering.

In a book with so much to enjoy, it is a pity that parts of it seem to have been hastily written and published. Chan, or his editors, should have stemmed a stream of unnecessary errors that mar the pages, especially on South Africa. For instance: the Portuguese coup was in 1974, not 1975; the Rivonia Trial was held in Pretoria, not in the Rivonia courthouse; a southern African barbecue is a braai and not a brai; Mbokodo was the soubriquet of the ANC's Security Department, not an individual warder; Terror Lekota left school in 1969 and was hardly a ‘student leader of the Soweto Generation’; Thabo Mbeki's brother is Moeletsi not Moletsi. These are minor errors, certainly, but their cumulative effect detracts from a well-informed account written with real verve.