The "Post" had this column written by one of their Black Reporters. A white doesn't dare say these things. PC madness!
washingtonpost.com
Mugabe's Madness
By Richard Pretorius
Saturday, October 18, 2003; Page A23
BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe -- At a steakhouse near the South African border, Wendy Mutingira waits tables and watches her country implode. With inflation at 400 percent, the restaurant offers two menus -- one featuring the selection of steaks, burgers and salads, the other listing the prices, which can change daily.
"There is no cash, no food. There are a lot of things we are out of," Mutingira says.
Across the road, Abigail Maposa is among the 30 or so people waiting to catch a ride. She will pay 8,000 Zimbabwe dollars for a lift to Bulawayo, as she does not have a car, and the nearby gas stations haven't had any fuel for nearly three weeks. Meanwhile, Munyardadzi Mahoro worries that his rent soon will go up again. He shells out 17,000 dollars a month for a dwelling that rented for 3,500 two years ago.
The Zimbabwe dollar is in free fall, the country in an apocalyptic economic crisis. Solving it, as many Zimbabweans will tell you, begins at the top. It also begins with the outside world turning much-needed attention to a dictatorship whose time should be up.
Twenty-four years into his rule in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, still feared by many of his country's citizens, is facing another disaster of his own making. International sanctions imposed after he apparently rigged the last election in 2002 and had the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai arrested have thrown the country into chaos. People openly question how long the 79-year-old president can hold on to power; each day seems to bring a new crisis or shortage of money, food or fuel.
But few here believe that Mugabe, who has hinted he might retire, will relinquish power so easily. After all, he is building another lavish palace. And, in one of the strange paradoxes that seem to define the continent's politics, he was recently applauded by fellow African leaders at the start of a development summit in Tanzania.
Playing their version of the race card, some of those same leaders voice approval of the Mugabe government's policy of taking land away from white farmers and redistributing it mostly to Mugabe's cronies. This has led to a sharp decline in agricultural production, helping sow the seeds of economic disaster and starvation. It's one thing to try to provide opportunities for long-oppressed, poor blacks. It is another to destroy the country in doing so.
While some African leaders are rightly calling for an end to the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe, their cry is not simply about helping the country's people but also about self-preservation. Not even neighboring South Africa, the continent's most advanced economy, can afford to take in refugees from Mugabe's madness.
In recent weeks, Mugabe's police have shut down the country's only privately owned daily newspaper and raided its offices, on the pretense that it had not registered as required under the new media laws. His move to hijack international food aid by putting his supporters in charge of distribution should have been condemned across the globe, but the response has been so tepid that Mugabe recently felt free to tell a South African television station that "the majority of our people are a happy lot."
Mahoro, who works two jobs (like every other person I talked to here), would beg to differ. When he asked a visitor to "give me your address and your phone number," Mahoro was pleading for help in getting out of the country.
With dual South African and Zimbabwean citizenship, Luckson Maligana is one of the few who can cross the border as they please. He says he first realized life had gotten out of hand in Zimbabwe when he needed 35 dollars to buy a piece of gum for his 10-year-old daughter. "I give her 100 dollars for school and it's nothing," he says. Yet, Maligana, who works as a security guard in Johannesburg, does hold out hope for Zimbabwe's future. "The people here are learning a lot from what is happening in South Africa," he says. "There needs to be an exchange of power. It's the right time to do so. A democracy here will be a mix of the people."
"Mugabe has to go for that to have a chance of happening," he added, echoing the thoughts of many of his countrymen. But like Charles Taylor in Liberia, Mugabe won't go until the noose is around his neck. The international community has to put it there. It also must pressure African countries to recognize that the sooner Mugabe goes, the sooner Zimbabwe will be able to once again feed and employ its own people. When that finally happens, customers will no longer need bags of cash to pay for meals at Wendy Mutingira's steakhouse, and Abigail Maposa will be able to put gas in her own car.
The writer is a copy editor for The Post's Foreign Desk.
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