Life in Zimbabwe has been nothing but a waiting game for the last decade. A waiting out of a regime, oft thought to be in its death throes, but endures, and continues to punish instead of serve.
A country which was the breadbasket of Africa is now the basketcase, a completely failed state in decay. A report on the BBC News this morning detailed that 2 million Zimbabweans will be dependant on food aid for survival this year, in a country which had incredible surpluses only a decade ago. The numbers could add up to five million at risk of hunger this year, out of a total population of 10million. Lets imagine the scene if 150 million Americans were dependent on the World Food Program to fend off starvation. Not only is this damaging to the physical body; it is detrimental to the mind.
As the politicians sit in Harare and bicker over Cabinet posts, the country lies in absolute ruin. The government is bankrupt. People cue up in line at 3am to get worthless money out the few solvent banks. Inflation has passed an incredible 40 million percent; money taken out just minutes before, if not used, will soon be rendered worthless.
According to the NYTimes,
A country which was the breadbasket of Africa is now the basketcase, a completely failed state in decay. A report on the BBC News this morning detailed that 2 million Zimbabweans will be dependant on food aid for survival this year, in a country which had incredible surpluses only a decade ago. The numbers could add up to five million at risk of hunger this year, out of a total population of 10million. Lets imagine the scene if 150 million Americans were dependent on the World Food Program to fend off starvation. Not only is this damaging to the physical body; it is detrimental to the mind.
As the politicians sit in Harare and bicker over Cabinet posts, the country lies in absolute ruin. The government is bankrupt. People cue up in line at 3am to get worthless money out the few solvent banks. Inflation has passed an incredible 40 million percent; money taken out just minutes before, if not used, will soon be rendered worthless.
According to the NYTimes,
Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed.
This is an extraordinary state of affairs, a test case of anarchy and disastrous rule. Mugabe has almost single-handedly performed one of the worst destructions of a civil society in history; his land reform policies dismantled the productive farmlands and landed them in the incapable hands of his cronies, where they have remained and rotted; and yet Mugabe remains in Harare, dictating terms, dictating lives. The mere fact that the people of Zimbabwe continue to endure, day in and day out, that they scratch out a living, that they somehow survive, is a true testament to the human spirit.
“It’s scary and it’s pathetic,” said Tendai Chikowore, president of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association, the largest and least radical of the teacher unions. She said a teacher’s monthly pay was not even enough to buy two bottles of cooking oil. “This is a collapse of the system, and it’s not only for teachers,” she said. “At the hospitals, there are no nurses, no drugs.”
