When he took power after Independence from the British in 1980, Zimbabweans observed the late Robert Mugabe as the man who would lead them to prosperity.
However, this soon faded off and terror crept in when several years later, his army of supporters were dispatched to murder people from the minority Dembele community.
Mugabe who died after a long battle with illness in Singapore on Friday belongs to the Shona community, while his rival at the time was Joshua Nkomo of the Ndembele.
Through the use of his former Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe sent in his Fifth Brigade battalion, a group of Shona military men trained by North Korean forces.
It is believed that the campaign dubbed "Gukurahundi" saw about 20,000 persons slaughtered to death in Matabeleland, the Western side of the South African nation.
What began as beatings soon evolved into mass execution which saw Ndembeles locked up in huts and burnt alive, and crops burnt in their farms to technically starve them.
The dead were emptied into mine shafts, as Mugabe reportedly boasted about the killings, with Meredith saying that they were forced to sing ZANU-PF slogans in Shona while dancing on the fresh graves of their dead ones.
"Don't cry if your relatives get killed Where men and women provide food for the dissidents, when we get there, we eradicate them," he says in his biography of the fallen leader.
Part of the torture included locking the victims in cages stained with blood and faeces of the previous captives, a campaign that was reportedly led by Mnagangwa.