Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d'État

Description: The classic study of coups d'état in post-colonial Africa, with incisive new foreword

A committed communist and anti-apartheid activist, Ruth First dedicated her life to African liberation struggles until her assas­sination by South Africa's Special Branch in 1982. The Barrel of a Gun establishes First's position in the canon of post-colonial revolutionary thought.

Review Quotes: "In her cruelly abbreviated life, Ruth First courageously grappled with a range of political conditions and mentalities. In The Barrel of a Gun, she transmuted her intimate experience of political adversity into lucid and unsparing insight into postcolonial realities and possibilities. No one interested in the past, present or future of Asia and Africa can afford to miss reading it."
--Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza

"Is history repeating itself in Africa, first at the level of tragedy and then at the level not of farce, but of tragedy again? Ruth First, who had been through the fires of struggle herself, used her sharp eye, sharp pen, and sharp sense of history to write a trenchant examination of military takeovers in newly independent Africa. Her focus was not so much on the thoughts and ambitions of individual leaders, as on the deficiencies of state that opened the doors to coups. Many sad lessons have not been learnt. A republication of her seminal work could not be more timely."
--Albie Sachs, author of We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge

"No one saw authoritarianism as clearly as Ruth First. The Barrel of a Gun is a portrait of the young men in uniform who ruled independent Africa and the dismal ideology they created - militarism. Sharply written and brutally argued, First's book about the coup d'état is an essential work of political theory."
--Samuel Fury Childs Daly, author of Soldier's Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire