Mugabe is the Mobutu of our time
Marian L. Tupy wishes that Zimbabwe would follow the lead of Botswana, a market democracy. For now, it swelters under the oppressive rule of a tyrant who is wrecking his country.
As in Zaire, the new owners showed little aptitude for farming. The agricultural sector soon collapsed and with it most of Zimbabwe’s tax revenue and foreign currency reserves. To meet its obligations to domestic and foreign creditors, the government ordered the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to print more money, sparking the first hyper-inflation of the 21st century.
Like Mobutu, Mugabe’s answer to the falling economy was to increase state patronage and the intensity of the looting. Mugabe, the Savile-Row-suit-wearing dictator, and Grace, his shop-till-you-drop wife, reportedly paid US$12 million for a 25-bedroom house in a posh suburb of Harare. His government now consists of 45 ministers and deputy ministers, each entitled to a variety of perks, including SUVs and formerly white-owned farms.
To buy their loyalty, the government has provided influential police officers and army lieutenants with hundreds of imported vehicles. Mugabe has recently signed into law an indigenisation programme that foresees majority stakes in all non-black owned private enterprises in Zimbabwe confiscated and given to black Zimbabweans. In reality, they are certain to be distributed among the government officials, and army and police personnel, without whose support Mugabe’s regime cannot survive.
Mugabe has also declared his intention to confiscate 25 per cent of shares in all non-state mining companies. This locust-like feeding frenzy that sees Mugabe and his cronies moving from one area of the economy to the next leaving nothing but destruction behind suggests that the ruling elite understands that the end of Mugabism is near. Members of the government continue to pay lip service to economic ‘reconstruction’, but their main preoccupation appears to be last-minute self-enrichment.
As I returned to Botswana, I felt relieved to leave behind a police state that makes it impossible for people to talk freely with one another; a state where taking a photograph of an empty grocery store can land you in prison. I was saddened by the sight of yet another African country that has collapsed into poverty, but I was also hopeful for before us lay Botswana — a market democracy, where life seems safe and increasingly prosperous.
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March 21st, 2008 8:24amTo give people an earthy grounding to Britain's complicity in the handing over of S.Rhodesia into the jaws of Marxist Leninist saboteurs. Read: "Bitter Harvest: The Great Betrayal and the Dreadful Aftermath", by Ian Smith. So great was Britain's wish to be rid of this jewel of Africa. So great was the anger of the then PM toward Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independents. So great was the British torque for appeasement towards black Africa's advancing communists... They gave it away!! There were safeguards but they turned a blind eye. They just couldn't be bothered. The devil in their eyes was the white minority government ... who wanted more time before handing over to majority rule. Who ... we should ask, is the devil now?