Over 40 years ago, as Africa commenced the long and arduous process ofdecolonisation, one of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a propheticwarning. Frantz Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leaderin the postcolonial era should not 'fall back into the past and become drunk onthe remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.' His powerfuldescriptions of a once effective leader who gradually secedes from realityand betrays the people who entrust him with their future has resonances for thetragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself today. Having reduced a oncesignificant anti-colonialism to a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kindof fallen leader Fanon cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders whoare being called upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ from that classic liberationisttext, The Wretched of the Earth.