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Back
to the dark ages
The Economist
May 19, 2007
The last person to leave
may not have any lights to turn out
IT IS hard to imagine
that things could get any worse in Zimbabwe. But, sure enough, day
by day, they do. Since the opposition, NGOs and church groups organised
a protest rally that was brutally crushed in March, the police and
militias have been intimidating, arresting and beating up political
opponents, journalists, lawyers and ordinary people alike. The government
has even warned the Catholic bishops, once considered inviolate,
to shut up or suffer the same fate. Meanwhile the inflation rate
has passed 2,200%; last week the national power company announced
that it would ration electricity in cities, possibly to a meagre
four hours a day, just as the southern hemisphere's winter is starting
to bite.
Power cuts are already
frequent, but the latest blackouts mark a new low. Residents of
Harare, the capital, have been rushing to get firewood and paraffin,
though a domestic worker's monthly wage can buy only five litres
(1.3 American gallons) of paraffin or two litres of cooking oil.
Many companies, already operating at about 40% of capacity, say
the cuts will force them to reduce their working hours even more.
"The whole thing is a nightmare," says Lovemore Mandebvu,
who runs a small furniture-making factory in Harare. "We don't
know when we will have power and when it goes. This is affecting
our output. Then at home water runs out when you are bathing, and
the electricity goes while you are cooking." Hospitals must
use gas stoves, coal-fired boilers, fuel generators, solar power
and candles.
Basic staples like maize
are becoming harder to buy. The official rate for the Zimbabwe dollar
is 250 to the American one, but the street value is now closer to
32,000. Many Zimbabweans survive only thanks to the
3m or so friends and relatives who have emigrated. Every day desperate
Zimbabweans cross the Limpopo river, braving crocodiles and occasionally
drowning, to try their luck in neighbouring South Africa. Trapped
into illegality there, many are exploited and abused.
Those who stay face the
increasingly arbitrary power of the police and militias. Since the
crackdown in March, there have been raids on Harare districts such
as Highfield and Glenview, known opposition strongholds, where random
beatings and arrests have become common. President Robert Mugabe's
government claims that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) is responsible for the violence and is behind a wave of bombings.
The MDC says the bombs are planted by the police to justify repression.
Last week lawyers protested against the arrest of two colleagues
and the routine defiance of court orders by the police. A march
was dispersed and several lawyers assaulted.
The latest efforts of
Zimbabwe's neighbours to improve things are still going nowhere.
After the violence in March, the Southern African Development Community,
a regional club of 14 countries, mandated South Africa's president,
Thabo Mbeki, to encourage negotiations between Mr Mugabe and his
opponents. But the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based
think-tank, says that Zimbabwe's ruler has shown no willingness
to co-operate with the regional initiative to prepare the ground
for presidential and parliamentary elections due next year, when
Mr Mugabe looks likely to run again. At present, there is little
chance the elections will be fair.
But some of Zimbabwe's
neighbours are sounding exasperated. Last week the Pan-African Parliament,
a talking-shop with a secretariat in South Africa, said it would
send a mission to investigate human-rights abuses. Mozambique's
energy company, a big supplier of Zimbabwe's electricity, may switch
off power unless it gets paid. And South Africa's government, long
in denial about the crisis on its doorstep, has just granted political
asylum to Roy Bennett, the MDC treasurer who fled Zimbabwe to avoid
another arrest. It turned down his application last year.
Still, this rare build-up
of pressure was released last week when, to the dismay of the United
States, the European Union and many others, Zimbabwe's minister
of environment and tourism, Francis Nhema, was elected to chair
the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, where he will preside
over discussions on land and rural development. Astonishingly, the
UN's African members, whose turn it was to hold the rotating post,
could think of no better candidate than one from a country whose
agriculture has been largely destroyed by its government's catastrophic
policies. Like many other Zimbabwean bigwigs, Mr Nhema himself pocketed
a farm that was confiscated a few years ago-and has already let
it lapse into ruin.
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