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days before he stood for reelection for a historic seventh term, President Tinotenda was pondering the past. With the weight of history on his shoulders, he was reflecting on those great leaders who’d created the nation of Zimbabwe. The names of the Shona kings of the Monomotapa Empire and Great Zimbabwe had mostly been lost in oral history, but their ruins remained standing.
    The Matabele people in southwestern Zimbabwe, his country’s largest minority, knew their ancestors well. A Zulu warrior named Mzilikazi had fled the powerful Shaka Zulu in the early nineteenth century, crossing north over the Limpopo River to create Matabeleland. Tinotenda had mixed feelings about the pesky Matabele. They were unwilling to cede authority to his government, so he was periodically forced to send in his troops. But he respected the Matabele’s plucky resolve.
    He held no such ambiguity about Cecil Rhodes. The British imperialist, through trickery and military force, had stolen the land of Zimbabwe from its rightful African owners and claimed it in the name of Anglo commerce. In his early days as president, Tinotenda had sworn to erase, as much as possible, any memory of Rhodes: streets and towns were renamed, memorials torn down, his accomplishments—if not the details of his treachery—carefully expunged from school history books.
    A better precedent for the Tinotenda legacy, he believed, was Mbuya Nehanda. She was a famous spirit medium who had led the First Chimurenga, a revolt against the British in 1896. An old woman, she’d been fierce and brave. She even managed to capture the British native commissioner and cut off his head.
Oh, if only I could have been there!
wished Tinotenda.
    Mbuya Nehanda was eventually captured and hanged by the British army, but Winston Tinotenda could feel her alive within his body. Her spirit was one reason he, too, had risen up against the British to fight the Second Chimurenga, the war for independence. A fight he was proud to have won. But he was always on the watch for new plots. For the return of his enemies.
    This day, his first post-tea visitor was the head of the army and his personal national security advisor. His name was, by no coincidence, General Simba Chimurenga. Tinotenda had discovered Simba long before he became president. The small boy had grown up not far from Tino’s home village, an orphan raised by a family friend. The young Simba had shown a knack for killing things swiftly and covering his tracks. Tinotenda had noticed.
    After independence, the boy who had grown up on stories of the glory of war couldn’t wait for military service. He longed to prove he was a true patriot. When Simba joined the army at the age of sixteen, he formally changed his last name to Chimurenga in honor of his predecessors. Tinotenda had approved of his nom de guerre and taken the promising young man under his wing. The president had then guided Simba through the army ranks, providing discreet but unmistakable orders to the military promotion boards. Simba was selected for special training in Romania and Ethiopia. After he had been handpicked by the president to command a particularly sensitive mission and performed marvelously, Simba Chimurenga was promoted yet again, becoming the youngest general in Zimbabwe’s history.
    He’d further burnished his reputation when, just after his ascendance, he stood before his men and bit the head off a deadly green mamba snake. In a country where snakes are feared as spirits of evil, this was an extraordinary show of bravery and—his men believed—magical powers.
    —
    G eneral Simba Chimurenga now stood, in full military dress and a chest covered in medals, waiting outside the president’s parlor. He tapped his feet with impatience.
    “His Excellency, Father of the Nation and Warrior of the People, President Winston H. R. Tinotenda, will see you now,” said the butler, with a dramatic bow at the waist.
    “My dear Simba,” the president greeted