Zimbabwe’s economy has all but collapsed, leaving it’s currency worth far less than the paper it’s printed on. The hyperinflation is now estimated at over a quintillion percent, although no one really knows.
Most Zimbabweans are switching to barter and the Zim dollar is virtually useless. The South African rand and the US dollar are now the most common forms of currency. For the many who are unable to access forex, this means they will be unable to survive. Purses and wallets have become redundant; people are now using shopping bags, suitcases, sacks and other large containers to carry cash.
Bank tellers are hidden from view by huge piles of the increasingly worthless currency. Nearly all businesses have stopped accepting cheques for payment - creating an absolute nightmare for everyone, because of the absurd cash withdrawal limits at the banks.
All these because one 80-year-old one greedy dictator and his parasite cronies what to loot the country a few more years. Meles Zenawi & Co. are doing the same thing to Ethiopia.
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How unfortunate! I was living in Harare, Zimbabwe when Col. Mengistu arrived in 1991. My home was searched by two presidential security officers who also interrogated me right in my place a few days before Col. Mengistu's wife and his arrival. I never talked to Mr. Mengistu although I had been admonished by some journalists to meet and chat with him.
Zimbabwe was, second to South Africa, the most industrialized and thriving member of the Southern African Economic Community (SADCC). Mugabe, a shrewd politician amassed power in the name of the Shona majority ethnic group. The minority party led by Joshua Nkomo was ousted out of political power sharing. Mugabe's communist party, ZANU-Patriotic Fronts' leadership has brought the country to total colapse within 26 years. The patriotic fronts proved good in the wild woods as gorrillas not as rational political leaders to take the nation to the new century. We cannot discount is struggle for independance for which we immensely grateful. But now they should retire to die in dignity.
Now both Mengistu and Mugabe being well-intentioned nationalist leaders should apologise to their people for their ruthlessness and mismangement. We, Africans are forgiving people. We have forgiven our colonizers and enslavers. Why not our own criminals who did not know any better? I think that is the way to go forward for the continent. Otherwise the continent will left out bleeding and languishing in poverty. This is especially indespensable as the world is regroupping to economic and political and regional blocks. Only a united and strong Africa can encounter the economic giants such as China, Europe and India in the future. Ethnicism and nationalism are soon going to be outmoded.
Let us work for peace and reconciliation and unity amidst diversity and other conceivable challenges of our time.
God bless Africa.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:45 pm