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Zimbabwe will collapse within six months, possibly leading to a state of emergency, says a leaked briefing report for aid workers in the country.

Rampant inflation will mean shops and services can no longer function and people would resort to barter, it said.

"The memorandum is talking about a situation where there is no functioning government or a total breakdown," an unnamed aid worker told the UK Times.

Zimbabwe's inflation is already 3,714% - the highest rate in the world.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6751671.stm

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London - In Zimbabwe, about the only thing faster than the country's annual inflation rate is the percentage gain in its benchmark stock market index in the past year.

The nation's industrials index has increased close to 39 000 percent in the past 12 months. The value of the index, composed of 77 companies, has doubled in the past two weeks. ...

"Last year, investors of the country suddenly understood that the only logical investment was the stock market,'' Gartman wrote in his newsletter this week.

"Debt was out, land might be taken from you by the government, but equity in the nation's viable businesses was the least likely place for the government to expropriate.''

On May 29, trade and industry minister Obert Mpofu said Zimbabwe might force foreign-owned companies to sell 51 percent of their shares to black citizens. This week, minister of mines Amos Midzi told a conference in Namibia that Zimbabwe planned to increase local control of mining resources

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I'm not holding my breath on the possibility of the US and the UK allowing the second part. They'll insist on making it a right-wing privatization regime, which will end up being worse.

That's what being on the Left means, if you really take it seriously.

[ 16 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
I never hold out hope for great leaders anywhere. My hope is always that the people will be able to make the losers who end up being the leaders to do great things in spite of themselves. Like the people of the U.S. made Lyndon Johnson end legal segregation or made Congress stop funding the war in Vietnam.

That's what being on the Left means, if you really take it seriously.

[ 16 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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And not only did LBJ refuse to listen to reason on Vietnam, he refused to go public with the proof he had, in the last weeks of the 1968 campaign, that the Nixon campaign had interfered with the Paris Peace Talks in order to make sure there wouldn't be a peace settlement before the election. In my view, Johnson did this because he wanted to make sure that the Democrats lost the White House as punishment for dumping him.

None of the above has anything to do with the effort to build a just society in Zimbabwe. It's just a spiteful, life-hating old psychopath lashing out at the world for no real reason.

Mugabe should go.

And the West should do the honorable thing and NOT force the Zimbabwean people into "free markets" and privatization when the whole neoliberal project has been a failure everywhere it's been tried. Zimbabwe needs freedom, but not greater inequality and foreign control of resources.

The West has no right to do in Zimbabwe what it forced the people of Eastern Europe to accept after 1989.

Democracy, yes. Free speech, yes. Capitalism, no.

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
One should remember that Mugabe is a Stalinist. That explains a lot.

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Actually, he wasn't. If Mugabe had been a Stalinist, he'd have started mass executions as soon as he took power. Also, he'd have immediately closed the borders, immediately imposed a state of emergency and a total crackdown on dissent(rather than waiting over twenty years after taking power) and would never have bothered holding free multiparty elections, as the man did for many years.

Mugabe has now become a tyrant, but he cannot be accurately called a Stalinist. A nationalist strongman, yes, but not a Stalinist.

Of course, then again, Stalin had a particular fondness for killing SOVIET Communists (and also for sending German Communist exiles back to be murdered by the Reich) so there's no accounting, I guess.

Btw, Fidel, I've started a new thread on another post-dictatorial transition here:

http://tinyurl.com/384r53

Hope to see you there.

[ 16 June 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Of course, Stalin was impressed with Hitler's crackdown on the socialist wing of the party. Stalin read Mein Kampf, and he meticulously underlined the juiciest references to Bolsheviks and Jews.

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
"Aryan or Jewish EARLOBES"?

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The industrialists referred to WWII as "a good war" for many years after.

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yeah they had good reasons for that.

WWII has transformed average-size amateurish US military into an overfed monster, with bases on every continent.

Ian Smith of Rhodesia(now Zimbabwe since 1979) was also backed by the west and was probably more the rotten sonofabitch that Idi Amin was. Smith, too, was notorious for his concentration camps.

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The UK government has defended its decision to resume the deportation of failed asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe.

Some 500 Zimbabweans have been sent letters urging them to return voluntarily or face expulsion.

A campaigner told the BBC it was curious that the UK condemned human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and yet tried to force people to return there.

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Curious?

I don't think so.

The British want White Power back in Zimbabwe. They don't want Black Zimbabweans back in Britain.

It's a bit much for the Western powers to render Zimbabwe's economy a shambles and then complain about fiscal competence.

"Who knows what has come from the galaxy? Who knows what lurks in the sky? Beyond God. Watch those around you. For who knows what today, tonight, or tomorrow will bring." John Carpenter's, The Thing

[ 17 March 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Mercy:
I'm always cautious about penning an aplogia for Mugabe but sanctions are likely the leading cause of inflation.

It's a bit much for the Western powers to render Zimbabwe's economy a shambles and then complain about fiscal competence.

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The sanctions don't cover enough of the economy to do much as they're targeted toward the personal transactions of people in the government.

See here:
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/zimbabwe/zimb.pdf
http://livingzimbabwe.blogspot.com/2007/12/sanctions-on-zimbabwe.html

Sanctions didn't make the Bank of Zimbabwe start printing money like it was going out of style. That started out as a political decision made because the government didn't have enough cash to make payments to veterans. That was also the impetus for the horribly implemented program of land reform that has left Zimbabwe's agricultural economy a shambles.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Didn't Zimbabwe just get rid of an oppressive white racist government that kept the black majority poor and illiterate not so long ago ?. What's taking them so long to bounce back ... to the way it was and better ?. What's the baseline for comparison here, Botswana?.

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Zimbabwe has provided military assistance for SWAPO’s liberation struggle in Namibia.

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Originally posted by Doug:

Botswana wouldn't actually be bad for comparison, except like Alberta here, they've cheated a bit. They have diamond mines.

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Originally posted by Doug:
Sanctions didn't make the Bank of Zimbabwe start printing money like it was going out of style. That started out as a political decision made because the government didn't have enough cash to make payments to veterans. [/URL]

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The US sanctions are far more effective then you acknowledge. Tawanda Hodona, a sharp critic of Mugabe, wrote about this recently:

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Zimbabwe’s economic woes are the direct result of a concerted and systematic campaign to effect regime change through an economic implosion.

Zimbabwe has a critical shortage of foreign currency. However for the past four years or so, Zimbabwe has been unable to obtain finance or credit facilities from international lenders to inject into the economy. And this is a direct consequence of a sanctions regime imposed against the Zimbabwe by particularly the US, and the EU.

That Mugabe is an evil, brutal, dictator that needs to be removed from office is not in doubt. It is however immoral to cause the removal of Mugabe from office by precipitating the collapse of a developing, only recently independent, now famine-ravished African country through an economic sanctions regime.

The US introduced economic sanctions on Zimbabwe through the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001. (ZIDERA) Through this enactment Zimbabwe’s access to finance and credit facilities was effectively incinerated.

ZIDERA empowers the US to use its voting rights and influence (as the main donor) in multilateral lending agencies, such as the IMF, World Bank, and the African Development Bank to veto any applications by Zimbabwe for finance, credit facilities, loan rescheduling, and international debt cancellation...

Simply put, owing to the size of the US vote and influence in these institutions, neither the IMF, World Bank nor the African Development Bank will lend to Zimbabwe, or offer it credit facilities. Therefore, needless to say, as a direct result of the US 2001 Act, Zimbabwe’s relationship with these multilateral lending agencies was immediately and severely affected.

In addition, Zimbabwe’s ability to reschedule its loan payments and to apply for debt cancellations in times of severe financial crisis was severely affected.

And once the IMF and World Bank stopped doing business with Zimbabwe, this had an immediate and adverse impact on Zimbabwe’s credit and investment rating. And with a drop in investment rating went the dream of low cost capital on the international markets.

ZIDERA was a masterstroke. At the stroke of a pen, Zimbabwe’s access to international credit markets was blocked. And relying purely on barter trade, and trade, mining, agricultural concessions, and on exports-generated foreign currency, Zimbabwe’s economy has been slowly but surely asphyxiated.

And the consequent foreign currency crisis has resulted in the continued devaluation of the domestic currency, rapid inflation, and all else that has manifested itself in the current Zimbabwe economic crisis.

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