Zimbabwe: living in a lunatic asylum

Zimbabwe: living in a lunatic asylum

• Zimbabwe dollar falls to all time low

• Zimbabwe crisis to worsen - analysts

• Inflation shoots up, again

• Murerwa wants end to price controls

• Zim inflation surges by 90 percent

• Murerwa slashes ministerial budgets

• Top businessman Naran dies

• SA approves US$1bn credit line for Zim

• RBZ devalues Zim dollar by 40 percent

• Zimbabwe faces economic meltdown

• Gono's economic plan crumbles as inflation shoots up

• Patrick Mlambo: A 100 reasons why Gono should resign

• Gono wants white farmers back

• Central back chief admits failure

• Gono revises inflation target 100 percent upwards

• Gono's 'sleepless nights' over inflation

• Gono fighting a losing battle

• Gono, the Zimbabwean Napoleon

• Patrick Mlambo: The small minds in charge of our economy

• Chido Makunike: Overcoming the 'Messiah Complex'

• Zimbabwe dollar depreciates by 4 percent

• Inflation accelerates once again

• Gono predicts inflation to fall to 20%

• Zim fools no-one with 9% unemployment claim

• Zim claims on lowered inflation unconvincing

• House prices bite Zimbabwe's poor

• Reserve Bannk cautions against paying ex-political prisoners

• $200bln windfall for ex-political prisoners

• Zimbabwe's inflation seen dipping to 160%

By Eddie Cross

THIS week, we broke a milestone of sorts - the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed to 100 000 to 1 against the US dollar.

Just three months ago it was about 25 000 to 1. A businessman in Harare told me that in his business, inflation had been 600 per cent in six months. There is no sign of any stop to this slide - if anything it is accelerating.

We are weeks away from the traditional planting season and there is still no sign of significant land preparation or major movement of fertilizer and other inputs. Last year Mr. Mugabe confidently predicted a 2,4 million tonne harvest of maize - plus high levels of production of other crops including 160 000 tonnes of tobacco. We produced about 600 000 tonnes of maize and 70 000 tonnes of tobacco - half of it very poor quality.

This past week the Minister responsible for Social Welfare quietly signed a letter urgently appealing to the international community for food to feed up to 5 million people until the next harvest. Over the weekend Mugabe stated, yet again, that Zimbabwe had enough food and did not need help.

Astonishingly the donor community agreed to keep the formal request for food aid confidential - in deference to the government's sensitivity to the issue and for fear that if it was made public they might not be "allowed" to give Zimbabweans food!

On May the 19th the Zimbabwe government launched "Murambatsvina" and in the subsequent three month period, with Khmer Rouge efficiency they destroyed some 300 000 homes and made 2,4 million people homeless and at the same time they destroyed up to 1 million small businesses and made 3 million people destitute.

Last week the Minister responsible for Local Government and technically,
Murambatsvina, wrote to donors asking them to fund the provision of tens of
thousands of garden sheds. The purpose - to replace the shacks knocked
down - many of which were in fact brick under asbestos or iron dwellings,
fitted with electricity and water. The crowning feature of this letter was
the suggestion that the government of Zimbabwe would nominate the supplier.

So get this into your head - they destroy the homes of millions of people,
destroy their livelihood and then ask donors to bring their hard earned
money into the country where it will be converted at a quarter of its real
value and then spent with a Zanu PF gravy train thug to give thousands of
people a wooden shack - which would probably be "leased" to them by some
corrupt official. The only sanity that accompanied this revelation was the
laughter of the officials recounting the story to me.

The fact that Chombo (the Minister in question) has the temerity to write
such a letter in the first place is astonishing - even more amazing is the
fact that he expected his request to receive serious attention. Oh did I
tell you that he also asked for aid to fund the clean up of the total mess
left in our townships by the campaign!

But I am not at all bemused at these developments for, after all, this past
weekend we saw the FAO and the United Nations spending millions of US
dollars on a conference in Harare attended by 170 delegates from 50
countries to discuss "food safety". Mr. Mugabe was asked to open the
conference - no doubt in recognition of the fact that he now has the world
community feeding half his population, one third of his population in exile
as economic and political refugees and has overseen the most precipitous
decline in life expectancy and life quality in any country in the world in
the past 50 years. No doubt the UN thinks that these achievements merit
granting the Mugabe regime this recognition. Just like putting Cuba and
other totalitarian States in charge of the Human Rights Commission of the
UN. If it were not so tragic it would be vastly amusing.

Then you have the specter of this smashed and abused country - like a mugged
man lying in the street and being run over by the passing traffic - actually
paying money to the IMF. Money taken from private schools and NGO's, food
agencies and exporters. $50 000 here, a million there. Money critically
required for food, drugs, fuel - all basic necessisities and the IMF has the
audacity to welcome the payments! Shown the source of the funds they express
shock and promise to investigate - but they still bank the cheques. I wrote
to the Fund and said send the money back - we need the stuff more than you
do to keep life and limb together - not even the courtesy of a reply.

When will this nightmare end? I said to a friend that we live in a lunatic
asylum where the lunatics are in charge and the sane are the inmates.
Sometimes I think the UN is a bit like that as well. You can leave the UN -
you can walk in the front door and out the back and ignore its lunatic
activities but you cannot do that with your country. In fact right now, they
are contemplating removing even our freedom to flee. We are locked in and
must work things out for ourselves. It does not help however when the rest
of the world accepts the lunatics who run our country as sane and sensible
people. One day they will appreciate that by doing so they demean themselves and give credence to what would otherwise be a clear case of collective insanity.

Thank goodness for market forces and the fact that no matter what the
management of this asylum does - they cannot fool the trade. No matter what
Mugabe and his cohorts do, the evidence of their failures are there in the
relentless slide in the value of the currency. Like white water rafting, the
rules in this game are simple, keep your life jacket tied tight and trust
its buoyancy to get you to the surface. Face downstream and put your feet
forward first to take any rocks or other obstacles. Enjoy the ride and get
back into the raft as soon as conditions permit. Work together and help each
other when conditions are really rough. The beauty of white water rafting is
that you do not need to know how to swim - just how to float, the water
eventually gets you where you want to go. For us - that is just around the
bend.
Eddie Cross is a leading Zimbabwean economicst and opposition figure
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