Zimbabwe’s National Sport – Inflation

Call it Mugabe Magic. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate has now hit 231-million percent per annum.

Let’s put that into some perspective for those of us who can’t stand to look at another obscenely huge number.

Let’s try 40% – per minute. Just standing in the checkout line the price of your groceries could multiply like crazy.

 

100 Billion Dollars – Chump Change?

It is if you’re holding 100-billion Zimbabwean dollars which, incidentally, is less than the price of a loaf of bread in that country today.

What to do, what to do? Well Zimbabwe has decided to simply knock 10-zeroes off its currency. Now, $100-billion becomes a more manageable one dollar, for the next few days at least.

Big deal. Economists estimate that the country’s annual inflation rate is as much as six times higher than the officially acknowledged 2.2-million per cent rate. 2.2 million versus 12.5 million, who cares? It doesn’t matter who’s right, it really doesn’t.

There’s only one way out for Zimbabwe and that entails President Robert Mugabe either swinging from the end of a rope or locked away in some dungeon. He knows it and so does everyone else. Of course that would also mean pretty much the same fate for Mugabe’s cronies and minions which include his murderous military and security services. They’re propping him up because their only way out is decidedly unpleasant.

Mugabe is now in power sharing talks with the country’s political opposition but, out of necessity, Mugabe insists that any deal must leave him as leader of the new government. To Mugabe, leader means dictator and so he’s essentially asking the opposition to consign itself to irrelevancy and place themselves at the mercy of his security forces. Ouch, ouch and ouch.

For the sake of the people of Zimbabwe this dark farce must stop but there is too much force defending him within the country and a woeful lack of resolve to intervene by the leaders of Zimbabwe’s neighbours.

If only Zimbabwe had oil.

 

Time to Put Down the Mad Dog of Harare

It’s a neat trick. Frustrate the legitimate democratic aspirations of your opposition, brutalize them and oppress your people – until they begin to think about things like regime change – and then arrest them for treason for thinking about regime change.

Robert Mugabe is the mad dog of Zimbabwe. Now he’s served notice that his army will “go to war” if he loses the presidential run-off in two weeks. ‘It shall never happen … as long as I am alive and those who fought for the country are alive,’ he said. ‘We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war for it.’

Now, the key words to Mugabe’s rant are “as long as I am alive.” From The Guardian:

“Sources across Zimbabwe have reported an increasing number of roadblocks manned by militias and war veterans, effectively cutting people off and creating a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

James McGee, US ambassador in Harare, said 30,000 potential MDC voters had fled their constituencies. Mugabe has already ordered charities to stop work, leaving millions struggling to find food in the collapsed economy.

A total of 67 people have been killed and tactics familiar from past state violence campaigns are returning – sticks rolled with barbed wire, whippings and arson. The internationally-touted ‘third way’ – a Government of National Unity – has been met with stiff opposition from the military, Zanu-PF and many in the opposition who want no truck with Mugabe. Andrea Sibanda, of Matabeleland Freedom Party said: ‘Whoever is floating the idea of GNU with Mugabe and Zanu-PF must be coming from another planet. How does one unite with them when their hands are dripping with blood of their kith and kin?'”

Nope, sorry, but this brutal charade has gone on far too long already. Somebody has to turn Mugabe’s generals against him to topple this monster or a force has to come from outside Zimbabwe’s borders to bring down the entire brutal regime. If Mugabe won’t step down while he’s alive, well that’s his choice, isn’t it?

 

Mugabe Holds Out for Immunity

The Guardian is reporting that Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has sent emissaries to the opposition leaders to broker a deal exchanging his resignation for immunity from prosecution – the standard fare sought by tyrants facing ouster.

The opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, has responded guardedly, saying it doesn’t trust the intermediaries and wants to deal directly with Mugabe instead.

Apparently the Zanu-PF negotiators have warned the MDC that, without immunity for the president and his top aides, Mugabe will impose emergency rule and schedule a run-off presidential election in 90-days, more than enough time to ensure he rigs the vote properly next time.

 

Mugabe Won’t Go Without A Fight

It never really seemed as though the fate of Zimbabwe would be decided at the ballot box. After a reportedly rigged election which still didn’t let Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party hold its parliamentary majority, it has come to violence.

The Times reports that Mugabe’s paramilitaries have been unleashed, ransacking opposition offices and moving to arrest foreign journalists.

“…a senior government spokesman said that the party was preparing to invoke “energy” it had not tapped during the previous election. “Zanu (PF) is ready for a run-off, we are ready for a resulting victory,” Bright Matonga, the Deputy Information Minister, said.

“In terms of strategy, we only applied 25 per cent of our energy into this campaign,” he added, but the run-off would be different. “That is when we are going to unleash the other 75 per cent that we did not apply in the first case.”Unconfirmed reports were circulating among the diplomatic community about an alleged Mugabe military plot to extend the three-week run-up to the second round to three months, and to use the time to shut down the provisions in the election law that help to thwart poll-rigging attempts.”

An opposition spokesman told the paper this seems to be the beginning of a “crackdown.”

 

The Sparks Are Yet To Fly in Harare

Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, claims a landslide victory over Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF in yesterday’s general election.

‘We’ve won this election,’ said Tendai Biti, the MDC’s secretary-general. ‘The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.’

Is this the beginning of the end to Zimbabwe’s nightmare, the end of Mugabe’s 28-year reign? Don’t count on it. The official results haven’t yet been announced and it’s hard to imagine Mugabe wouldn’t rig an unfavourable outcome to claim victory. That’s especially true given that Zimbabwe’s army and police leaders have announced they won’t tolerate an MDC win.

Mugabe, corrupt and incompetent as any leader can be, has been clever enough to ensure the leadership of his country’s military and security services are utterly beholden to him. Who needs to worry about the people so long as you have the absolute loyalty of all the guns?

 

Zimbabwe’s Misery Deepens

The damage the madness of Robert Mugabe has caused the people of Zimbabwe at times seems almost bottomless.

Today the Zimbabwe National Water Authority announced to the citizens of the capital, Harare, and the nearby town of Chitungwiza that all water supplies will be cut off for a week. Imagine being dirt poor in the midst of an economy in complete shambles and being told that you’ll have to do without water for a week.

The government agency is blaming the water disruption on power failures at the region’s waterworks.

Waterborne diseases are already spreading through Harare and are expected to increase.

Water authority workers have told UN observers that the utility’s problems aren’t caused by power failures but the inability of the water authority to obtain chemicals to treat the water from Malawi and Zambia.

Some locals blame the problems on mismanagement triggered in 2001 when Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government replaced elected city officials with its own commission. There are reports that industrial and residential effluents are being pumped into the city’s water supply dam which might explain the discoloured water that has been coming from city taps.

 

Zimbabwe’s Hell

The price of meat, cooking oil and clothes went up 223% – since last week. It’s one of the symptoms that may herald the end of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. The country is in meltdown and it’s worsening fast. Inflation stands at 1,200% annually and it’s picking up fast.

Zimbabwe’s doctors have been on strike for weeks. They want a raise – a 9,000% pay hike. Now the country’s nurses have joined them.

Civil servants and police got a 300% raise last week but 70% of the work force is unemployed and destitute. Now the country is beginning to suffer a cholera outbreak. The sewage treatment plant in the capital, Harare, has broken down and has been dumping raw sewage into the city’s reservoir.

Over the past eight years the country’s poverty rate has shot up from 30% to 80%.

Believe it or not, worse is coming. The country faces a severe agricultural decline. Large tracts of farmland awarded to Mugabe loyalists sit fallow.

The accounts coming out of Zimbabwe over the past year keep getting worse and worse. Each time it becomes harder to imagine how Mugabe clings to power. Even his Zanu-PF party wants him gone.

The country is clearly at the breaking point. Robert Mugabe’s days in power may end very soon and it’s unlikely he’ll have a soft landing.