This research project looks at the practice and experience of political imprisonment over a 50-year period in Zimbabwe. It uses imprisonment as a lens through which to study the state on the one hand and the social history and politics of opposition movements on the other. It draws on oral history, memoirs, letters, state records, media, and the archives of institutions that supported and lobbied on behalf of political prisoners to trace shifting practices of repression, ideas about race, gender, rights and law, and the social lives of prisoners.