Harrare is the Next Darfur

Sudan is not the only country falling apart in Africa. Zimbabwe is falling apart, and the world community takes little notice. Check my other blogs on Zimbabwe to follow this development.

Over three million people have left Zimbabwe in recent years, where there is 80% unemployment and heightening inflation is above 10,000%. President Mugabe's price controls only worsen the problem. The UN World Food Program estimates that 4 million Zimbabweans will rely on food aid by next year, due to the impossibility for most to purchase foods at such inflation rates. Mugabe's idiotic land reform program, which stole from whites and redistributed to blacks, turned a prosperous industry into subsistence agriculture.

Mugabe is a thief with regards to democratic rule as well. He stole the vote in the last election, and this March, he is expected to do it again if he looses the majority. In Chetugu, close to Mugabe's home, the streets are reported as "bare", as the struggling factories lay off workers by the hundreds. People are so hungry in Zimbabwe that the opposition to Mugabe has virtually vanished, and solidarity in the search for food has become a priority. In the outskirts of Harrare, the capitol city, much-feared youth militias roam the streets, foreshadowing a possible outbreak of violence between Mugabe's ruling party and coup-conspiring paramilitaries. The opposition to Mugabe is reportedly stronger in the polls, mainly residing in urban areas. The agricultural districts, however, are of course loyal to Mugabe -- where the failure of land-reform is little understood, and loyalty to racial connections is much stronger.

It only gets worse. In the next few weeks, the ZANU-PF Parliament is expected to pass a bill that will push 51% of all businesses into black ownership. This will be added to a law which already exists to preserve 60% of all businesses for blacks. This means the business community will be 80% redistributed altogether. South Africa has a similar, retroactive policy. But Zimbabwe is the only country to declare that a white person cannot own more than half of a business either. African capitalists and businesspeople are furious, and are threatening to sell most of their ownership if the law is passed.

In the following year, I am expecting that Zimbabwe will utterly fall apart unless drastic changes are made, and adequate attention and condemnation is given to Mugabe's completely unfair socialist regime.