Consequences of hyperinflation.
And the stock market has risen 20-fold !
If it happens here, we'll have Dow 150,000 party hats on CNBC while BrazilAmerica searches for food.
Living off rats to survive in Zimbabwe
By Jeff Koinange
CNN
(CNN) -- Twelve-year-old Beatrice returns from the fields with small animals she's caught for dinner.
Her mother, Elizabeth, prepares the meat and cooks it on a grill made of three stones supporting a wood fire. It's just enough food, she says, to feed her starving family of six.
Tonight, they dine on rats.
"Look what we've been reduced to eating?" she said. "How can my children eat rats in a country that used to export food? This is a tragedy."
This is a story about how Zimbabwe, once dubbed southern Africa's bread basket, has in six short years become a basket case. It is about a country that once exported surplus food now apparently falling apart, with many residents scrounging for rodents to survive.
According to the CIA fact book, which profiles the countries of the world, the Zimbabwean economy is crashing -- inflation was at least 585 percent by the end of 2005 -- and the nation now must import food
'We live like animals'
In the midst of the rubble that litters the once-scenic capital, Winnie Gondo, a mother of five, uses any means available to survive. She lives in a burned-out vehicle.
Gondo told CNN she lost not only her home but a twin son, who died from the squalid conditions.
"I've lost everything," she said. "We live like animals here and there's no relief in sight."
Zimbabwe has been reduced to a nation of beggars, Archbishop of Bulawayo Pious Ncube said.
"Life has become extremely difficult in Zimbabwe and a lot of depression ... people are very much depressed and they can no longer think idealistically. They're looking all the time for food -- 'Where do I get my next meal,'" he said.
Ncube traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa, to show a video that he says details numerous cases of police brutality and illegal clamping down on anyone who opposes Mugabe.
The archbishop said that Mugabe wants to hold on to power, in part to avoid the same fate as Charles Taylor, who once ruled Liberia. After being forced from office in 2003, Taylor now is in a prison awaiting trial at The Hague, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ncube believes that if Mugabe keeps control, Zimbabwe will continue to sink into an "abyss," and experts agree the only way the nation will eventually get off its knees is when a new president is elected.
"The key will be when Robert Mugabe moves out of the picture as a leader of Zimbabwe," Gutto said.
Until such time, Zimbabwe seems set to remain as a nation of food lines and fuel queues, of shacks and squatters, of rats and rat-eaters -- a nation fast grinding to a halt.
"I can't remember the last time I ate real food," says Elizabeth, the mother feeding her family. "We can't afford anything anymore. We're now just eating these rats to survive |
