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Would Bob approve of what Bob has done?
Quentin Wray, Business Report
August 27, 2007

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=4003323

Cost of livin' gets so high,
Rich and poor they start to cry:
Now the weak must get strong;
They say, "Oh what a tribulation!"
Them belly full, but we hungry;
A hungry mob is a angry mob...

A year or so before his death in 1981, Bob Marley, who penned these words, performed at the first independence celebrations in Zimbabwe.

Later he later described this as the "biggest honour" of his life.

One wonders how he would feel now, given that these lyrics could have been written yesterday about a country whose rebirth, after years under oppressive minority rule, he helped usher in.

One hopes that, unlike sub-Saharan Africa's current leaders, he would have had the courage to stand up and publicly denounce the rape of a beautiful country.

Pro-democracy advocates are fond of arguing a positive - yet largely imaginary - link between good governance and economic growth.

This so-called "democracy dividend" is trotted out to make autocrats and dictators, like Comrade (Cde) Bob and his cronies, forgo their evil ways to secure economic stability.

As much as I would love this to be true, it patently isn't.

Just one of many examples proving the disconnection between democratic values and economic performance is the recent drive by the Chinese Communist Party, which runs China Inc, to give newspapers two choices: publish positive news or be accused of inciting the overthrow of the government.

No Western government would get away with what the Chinese government does in terms of its human rights record, environmental devastation and cynical exploitation of target countries, especially in Africa.

And yet its growth rate is stellar.

South Africa, which outperforms China in all significant measurements of human rights, has a fairly pedestrian growth rate.

It just doesn't seem right, does it?

The fact that the Zimbabwean economy has collapsed so spectacularly is often cited as an example of how turning one's back on democracy ushers in economic failure.

But to argue this, in Zimbabwe's case at least, is a mistake.

If the Zim government had merely given the opposition a klap for the impertinence of thinking someone other than Cde Bob should be in charge but had left the farms alone and not appropriated most of the available foreign exchange for itself, the country would probably still be solvent.

Other countries, such as China, fail all democratic tests but are phenomenal economic success stories. There is no reason why Zimbabwe could not have followed suit if it had sound economic management.

The ongoing economic meltdown in Zimbabwe happened not because the government started abusing human rights with impunity but because it messed with the basic laws of economics.

If the economy had been left intact and allowed to do its thing, inflation would now be well south of 7 000 percent and more than two out of 10 adults would be in work.

Starvation would certainly not be a daily reality for the middle classes, a group that is now shrinking both in girth and in numbers.

The irony, which appears lost on most commentators, is that Mugabe's efforts to hang on to power are economically so unsound that he has effectively sealed his own fate in a way that no amount of foreign intervention could have done.

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