Giving Robert Mugabe a fair hearing around the escapades of a Zambian track runner, who breaks through the colour barrier for black African athletes, is no stretch. It really did happen and this book tells when and where. Backgrounding the story the momentous struggle to end British colonialism and white minority rule is unveiled in lively human terms. The long distance runner, Daniel, is forefronted along with his track rival, a white South African policeman. They lighten a tale on two continents researched by a British-born reporter in an America darkened with the 1963 assassination of John Kennedy and by racism as the two athletes run in America and explore relations in America's Deep South. When the two are embroiled in the Zimbabwe insurgency, and in Daniel's escape from a South Africa torn by apartheid, a quietly moral message rings through the final pages. Read then decide if Britain really did go wrong in Africa and if that country still heads in the wrong direction over Zimbabwe.