Waking Up Alone: How Elite Plotters Toppled Mugabe’s 37-Year Reign

HARARE, Zimbabwe—Robert Mugabe awoke last Wednesday in his luxurious palace known as “Blue Roof” to find that his head of security wasn’t there for the usual morning briefing. Only then did the 93-year-old president, the survivor of many challenges over 37 years of tumultuous and widely criticized rule, realize he was under house arrest.

No one had awakened Mr. Mugabe during the night, according to senior security officials, as Zimbabwe’s military deployed tanks and troops around the capital, seizing government buildings…