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This article participates on the following special index pages:

  • Price Controls and Shortages - Index of articles

    • Who will save Zimbabweans?
     New Vision (Uganda)
    July 20, 2007

    Visit the special index page on price controls and shortages

    http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/14/575800

    PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has unleashed thousands of policemen on the business community to enforce price controls. Desperate to contain rising inflation, the highest in the world at 4,500%, Mugabe ordered a freeze on prices of bread, milk, cooking oil and other consumer items.

    This is ridiculous because every nation has gone for market-economy, and Mugabe is unable to provide incentives to producers and businesses.

    Already shops and food stores are empty and there is no ray of hope for supplies.

    Zimbabwe has more problems. There is no respect for human rights and freedom of expression. Newspapers critical of the government, such as The Daily News, were forced to close in violent circumstances.

    The BBC and CNN have also been banned from filming or reporting from Zimbabwe. And the public broadcaster (ZBC) is used as a state propaganda tool.

    The problems started with Zimbabwe's involvement in the DRC war
    (1998-2002)which drained the treasury. Mugabe had no justifiable cause to intervene given that Zimbabwe does not share a border with the DRC.

    And land reform is not a problem per se, but Mugabe's wish to cling to power. Otherwise why has South Africa, with similar land problems, not collapsed economically?

    Unlike South Africa, Mugabe rushed land reforms because he had no other way to win elections, having lost popularity tremendously. Still, elections have become a joke, and the latest one in 2002 was characterised by vote-rigging, intimidation and fraud.

    Yet Mugabe is currently trying to amend the constitution in an attempt to bypass the 2008 scheduled elections and stay in power until 2010. Zimbabweans are angry, hungry and in desperate need of help. May the African brothers and sisters help.

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