THE BARREL OF A GUN, political power in Africa and the coup d'etat

513pp., paperback, New Edition, Verso, London, (1970) 2026

ISBN: 9781804299449

Ruth First's classic study of coups d’état in post-colonial Africa was first published by Allen Lane in 1970. This new edition includes a foreword by Christopher J. Lee.

"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, former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and 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

Ruth First (1925- 1982) was a journalist, editor, committed communist and anti-apartheid activist A defendant in the 1956 Treason Trial and detained for 117 days in 1963, she went into exile in 1964. She published her record of the ordeal, 117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation Under the South African 90-Day Detention Law, and numerous other books. In 1977, she was appointed research director of the Centre for African Studies at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. In 1982 she was assassinated at the centre by a letter bomb sent by agents of South Africa’s apartheid government.

Historian Christopher J. Lee has written or edited thirteen books on different aspects of decolonization, global history, and the South African Left, and has held academic appointments at universities in Africa, Asia, and North America. He is currently Co-General Editor of the five-volume Cambridge History of Colonialism and Decolonization.