US envoy blasts Mugabe's 'voodoo' economics

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By Staff Reporter

THE American ambassador to Harare has blamed the Zimbabwean government's "short sighted" and misguided "voodoo" economic policies and corruption for the current crises in the southern African country.

"Neither drought nor sanctions are the root of Zimbabwe's decline," Christopher Dell said in one of his strongest ever criticisms of President Robert Mugabe's government.

"The Zimbabwe government's own gross mismanagement of the economy and its corrupt rule had brought on the crisis," Dell said in a speech at a university in the eastern city of Mutare on Wednesday and obtained by AFP Thursday.

"Despite Zimbabwean leaders' disparaging dismissal of textbook economics, there are no alternatives to orthodoxy," he said.

"To argue that they are, is simply what the first President Bush long ago in a different context, called 'voodoo economics,'" he said.

Dell, who was briefly detained last month for entering a restricted area near Mugabe's official residence, said it was impossible for Zimbabwe "to pull itself out of the hole it has dug by itself."

"It simply can't do it. The decline has now gone too far. Zimbabwe must re-engage with the international community to get balance of payments support and debt restructuring," he said.

"The policies undertaken by the government today fall well short of what is needed to address the economic deterioration caused... by shortsighted and misguided government policies," he said.

Zimbabwe's economy has been on a steep decline since the late 1990s, shrinking by 30 percent over the past six years with inflation climbing to a triple-digit level.

The manufacturing sector has shrunk by 51 percent while foreign direct investment has "evaporated" from 444 million US dollars in 1998 to nine million dollars last year, according to Dell.

Over four million of Zimbabwe's 11.6 million inhabitants face food shortages, according to UN agencies - AFP
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