Oh Zimbawe!

Hatip redstate.com



I Know This Will Come As A Shock . . .But things are just getting worse in Zimbabwe:

For some 10m Zimbabweans, Christmas 2007 will be the worst in memory. As if coping with inflation, ­estimated at more than 40,000 per cent, and shortages of food, fuel, electricity and water were not enough, they cannot draw their money from bank accounts because of a cash shortage engineered by the authorities.

For the past fortnight people have had to queue for hours - even days - at teller machines and banks to try to draw out their cash, amid repeated promises from Gideon Gono, central bank governor, the crisis would be resolved by Christmas.

On Wednesday, Mr Gono announced the issue of three new large-denomination notes, the largest of Z$750,000 ($25 at the official exchange rate or $1.50 at the more realistic parallel rate).

At the same time, he withdrew the previous largest note (Z$200,000) as he believed that 97 per cent of the Z$67,000bn note issue ($13.3m at the parallel rate) was being held by speculators, hoarders, unscrupulous business people and "cash barons".

Businessmen say that because they cannot withdraw cash from the banks, they must buy it in the parallel market at a premium of 30 per cent and more, to pay suppliers and workers.

Read on . . .

The situation is, of course, insane. The rate of inflation in Zimbabwe is so bad as to be utterly and completely mind-boggling. And yet, for whatever reason, the article ends with the following anodyne passage:


Most, if not all, of these problems can be laid at the door of President Robert Mugabe's government. Yet the government has a Teflon-like ability to escape condemnation.

Queues for cash, fuel or bread are remarkably good humoured.

No one can say how long this can go on. Some economists and political analysts say there must be a breaking point, but ask anyone who will win elections in March, and the answer is Robert Mugabe.

Well, gosh. When you think about the way Mugabe rules Zimbabwe, does it really come as any surprise whatsoever that the people who live under his thumb are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that they maintain their emotional equanimity in spite of all of the miseries that have befallen them thanks to the misrule of the Mugabe government? I mean, when a regime has a reputation for thuggery, it should be expected that most of the citizens who have to live with that regime will try their hardest to ensure that they do not arouse the regime's ire.

Meanwhile, the consequences of Zimbabwe's Weimarian inflation levels show up in just about every aspect of national society--including, of course, the education of Zimbabwe's children:


In the car park outside the headmaster's office of one of Bulawayo's most prestigious state secondary schools, the school bus is slowly rusting into obsolescence. In the secretary's office, the printer is idle for lack of paper, ink ribbons and indeed the secretary herself, who along with a quarter of the teaching staff has left recently in search of a living wage.

"We cannot afford petrol. We cannot afford paper, I cannot pay my staff," said the headmaster. He had just returned from the bank with a sack of notes to pay his teachers. Each brick of $Z500 notes, the only ones available, was worth about 20 US cents on the parallel exchange market.

The deputy headmaster took up the story. "The situation is critical. We have 1,600 children and only about 75 members of staff. There is an average of four to five children per textbook - and that is where the textbooks are available."

It's been said before and it is worth saying again: If Robert Mugabe actively sought to wreck Zimbabwe, he could not do a better job than he is doing right now.