T he final chapter in the story of Robert Mugabe did not follow the pattern of the downfall of other strongmen I have covered in recent years. The departures of Muammar Gaddafi, of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, which was the start of the Arab Spring, and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine had taken place after an uprising, a period of violence of varying duration, then a sudden and, in the case of the Libyan leader, brutal ending.

The decline and fall of Zimbabwe’s president was a slow-burn, a prolonged affair. The outcome was inevitable, but it was one played out with those who deposed him going through a supposed adherence to the laws and customs and traditions, national and tribal, of the country.