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For stable Africa, Zimbabwe needs a change of leadership
Todd Moss
February 04, 2004

http://www.cgdev.org/content/opinion/detail/2979/

When I lived in Zimbabwe a decade ago, it was one of Africa’s most promising countries. It exported food, its economy was growing, and it had made respectable strides against poverty. Perhaps most importantly, Zimbabwe had rebounded from a brutal civil war to dislodge a racist regime and became an example of reconciliation. Zimbabwe was a great hope for Africa’s future.

For the United States, it was a growing partner for trade and investment and a significant ally in the battle against global poverty and instability.

Today, Zimbabwe’s economy is in freefall, having contracted by a third in the past four years.

Unemployment is 70 percent. More than half the population will require food handouts this year, and nearly one in four has fled the country. Emigration, combined with AIDS, has emasculated the once-vibrant middle class – the key to building any successful democracy.

And Zimbabwe’s unraveling has come just as the United States has begun a meaningful re-engagement with Africa. But instead of an ally, Zimbabwe has become a strategic concern and a humanitarian emergency.

Zimbabwe’s tragedy is that its crisis is man-made. The downward spiral really began in 2000 when President Robert Mugabe, in power for two decades, felt threatened by a growing opposition movement. What followed was a model of how to destroy a country.

The ruling party hired thugs to attack opposition members and invade large farms, jettisoning a sensible land reform plan. Commercial agriculture was devastated and the land turned over, not to landless peasants, but to Mugabe’s cronies. The independent media were harassed and foreign correspondents expelled. Despite a climate of fear, Mugabe still needed to steal the March 2002 election.

Zimbabwe is now an international pariah, finding itself in the company of some of the world’s worst regimes. It has already been suspended from the Commonwealth (an international group of former British colonies) and the International Monetary Fund recently moved to expel the country, a step only ever taken before against Sudan.

Zimbabwe is also rapidly dropping out of the global economy. Discarding economic logic, the government is printing money and resorting to socialist-era price controls. Zimbabweans are struggling both with shortages of basic goods and spiraling prices.

Not only are Zimbabwe’s people suffering, but the rest of the continent is being held back as well. South African President Thabo Mbeki’s New Partnership for African Development, for example, is a quid pro quo of better government by African leaders in exchange for more aid, trade, and investment from rich countries. But the deal just isn’t credible as long as Mugabe is tolerated.

Regime change is Zimbabwe’s only way out. The impetus for this must come from international and regional pressure in support of local democratic forces. The United States and the Europeans have already imposed travel and financial restrictions that target Mugabe and his cohorts without hurting ordinary people.

But in practice, the West has little leverage on a leader who just doesn’t care. So the burden falls squarely on Zimbabwe’s neighbors, especially South Africa. Yet President Mbeki’s strategy so quiet diplomacy is a total failure. Fortunately, there are signs that other African leaders, such as Ghana’s John Kufuor and Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki, are losing patience.

The United States and its allies need to keep the pressure on. Just recently, the State Department rightly moved to tighten the sanctions noose. The United States must also continue to encourage Africa’s leaders to act decisively.

This is crucial not only for Zimbabweans, but also all those, including Americans, who seek a more stable and prosperous Africa.

*Moss, a Rochester native, is a research fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Global Development in Washington DC.

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