Robert Mugabe’s Birthday: Zim Imperiled February 19, 2007
Robert Mugabe’s birthday is this week, and Zimbabwe’s tyrant is
planning quite the birthday bash- a celebration estimated to cost a million dollars in a country racked by 400% monthly inflation ,
striking doctors and nurses, an outbreak of cholera, and the advent of
a police state. Yesterday, Mugabe’s policemen killed a meeting of the
main opposition political party before it even got started.
Doctors and nurses have been on strike for a month over several
issues, and civil servants have also gone out on strike. Annual
inflation is running at some 1600% ( if it can even be estimated). The
Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, one of the many organizations becoming
increasingly alarmed at the country’s hyperinflation, estimates that
the cost of living for a family of six (not an unusual family size in
Zimbabwe) jumped from $245 in December to $1, 835 in January. In a
country where the average wage is $100 per month, that is clearly an
unsustainable situation. Moreover, a number of basic food staples are
simply not available through official markets and are becoming
increasingly hard to obtain in the “parallel”- read underground-
economy.
Political opposition is heating up. In addition to the threat of
widespread strikes, Mugabe’s main opponent, the Movement for Democratic
change, tried to hold a Zimbabwean court sanctioned assembly
yesterday.The response was brutal police oppression,and suspension of an already tenuous right to assemble :
A tense calm prevailed in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, on Monday after a police crackdown led to several clashes with angry supporters trying to attend an opposition party rally on Sunday, sanctioned by the High Court.
There were unconfirmed reports that three people died in skirmishes between the police and an estimated 50,000 supporters of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who had congregated. Police said they were investigating.
The MDC has good cause to rally. In addition to the hyperinflation and shortages, Mugabe appears to be setting himself up for an extension of his decades- long rule. He was expected to step down in 2008, but now is suggesting a two year extension of his term to 2010, the year of parliamentary elections. And the reason? To save money.
As a measure of the civic chaos now overtaking the country, a cholera epidemic seems to be in the offing. Three people have already died and at least nineteen more are sick with the waterborne illness. The breakdown of basic water and sanitation will probably ensure many needless fatalities in a country where the medical establishment, meager as it is , is on strike. Since 2000, life expectancy in Zimbabwe has deteriorated to medieval levels. Men can expect to live 37 years: women, 34 years.
Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of southern Africa, is a starving nation. International aid agencies blame most of the decline on Mugabe’s land redistribution program , and his vicious efforts at urban slum clearing.
Now Mugabe is facing a revolution. No matter how extravagant the Potemkinesque celebrations, his country can feel no joy.
Tags: congregated | Tsvangirai-led | unconfirmed | trying | tense | supporters | SKIRMISHES | sanctioned | Reports | rally | prevailed | police | opposition | faction | estimated | died | crackdown | clashes | calm | attend | ZIMBABWEAN | Zimbabwe | sunday | Politics | movement | MORGAN | Monday | HARARE | DEMOCRATIC
- Posted in : Uncategorized
- Author : M. Riggs
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