Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
HOME Human Rights Watch Zimsite Independent Standard ZimbDaily Kubatana GoZimbabwe ZimOnline ZimSituation MDC
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
March 10, 2008
What will Zimbabweans do if Mugabe rigs the elections again?
President George Bush recently renewed targeted sanctions against the leaders and top officials of the Robert Mugabe regime and ZANUPF.
Executive Order 13288 prohibits Americans citizens from engaging in any financial, trade or related commercial activities with members of the Mugabe regime and ZANUPF. Their names appear in the Specially Designated Nationals list of the United States Government.
This executive order also requires that any property or assets of the Mugabe regime’s and ZANUPF top officials that are found in the United States must be blocked and be reported to the US Treasury Department.
Part of the targeted sanctions also ban Mugabe and his cronies from visiting the United States. The exception is when they come at the invitation of the United Nations. In this case, they are restricted to within 25 miles of the United Nations headquarters.
This must be an embarrassment to Mugabe. When he comes to the United Nations, he is like a caged animal, specifically forbidden to visit even his propaganda embassy in Washington DC. In contrast, other presidents from the region and elsewhere in the world can visit any part of the United States.
The targeted sanctions also include a ban by the United States to any non humanitarian assistance to Zimbabwe.
Other western countries, notably, the European Union, have also renewed, or are in the process of renewing, their targeted sanctions against Mugabe’s regime.
Major international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF have suspended aid and loans to Mugabe’s regime. Mugabe’s response has been to turn East to countries like China and Malaysia, Iran as well as to Libya and Sudan.
For a number of years there have been reports that Mugabe has signed an agreement with one or more of the countries of the East.. But the strange thing is none of these promised investments have had, if any, any significant impact on the Zimbabwean free-falling economy.
It is common knowledge that Zimbabwe is now in economic dire straits. A key ingredient of the economy is inflation which has skyrocketed to nearly 200,000 percent, although the official figures put this at 100,000 percent.
Once a sub regional power, the Zimbabwean economy has been reduced to a tattered informal economy where anybody sells anything to whoever is able and willing to buy. The economy has recorded a negative growth every single year for the past eight years.
Mugabe has one explanation and one solution to this sordid state of the economy.
He blames sanctions for the appalling economic conditions.
His short-term solution is to print more money. It is reliably reported that plane loads of money are arriving in Harare every two days. For a man who claims to have a degree in economics as well as have a cabinet with a large chunk of ministers with doctoral degrees, it boggles one’s mind how Mugabe can unashamedly believe that targeted sanctions are the cause of, and printing money is the solution, to Zimbabwe’s economic problems.
The only other dictator who resorted to the massive printing of money was Idi Amin of Uganda. He believed that printing more money was what Uganda needed to pay its debts and salary increases. But then Amin did not have a high school education. Today Amin would be proud to have a faithful disciple in Mugabe.
Isn’t there anybody in Mugabe’s regime with the courage and knowledge to advise this dictator that the value of money is based on the wealth that a nation creates. You only print more money if you create more wealth.
There must be a positive relationship between printing money and creating wealth. In the case of Zimbabwe, there is a negative relationship. The Zimbabwean dollar has now plunged to the depths of hell. It is hard to imagine that barely 20 years ago ZW$1 was equivalent to US$1.6 . Ten years ago ZW$5 were equivalent to US$1! Today US$1 is equal to over ZW$30 million. And in the past ten years no wealth has been created in Zimbabwe. In fact, as I said before, the economy has shrunk by nearly 50 percent.
When Mugabe gained power in 1980, the then Rhodesia had been under international sanctions for about 15 years. But the country’s basic economic infrastructure was sound and functioned. In contrast, Mugabe’s regime has been under what he calls sanctions about half the time Rhodesia was, but the economic infrastructure has collapsed.
Even taking into account the population differences between 1980 and today, there is absolutely no rational excuse why the economy could have fallen so precipitously. Neighboring countries have also recorded population growths. They have enjoyed modest to phenomenal growth rates. Mozambique, which was plunged in a civil war for a large part of its independence period, has recorded one of the highest growth rates in the SADC region. The same applies to Angola.
Zimbabwe never had a civil war after independence to the extent that Mozambique and Angola had, yet it is trailing far behind other SADC countries in economic development and growth.
Apart from regurgitating, like a broken record which keeps repeating itself, the now worn- out sanctions bogey, Mugabe has not given a credible answer to the question why the economy has collapsed. His erratic behavior, bordering on a state of psychosis, raises questions as to whether Mugabe still has any sanity in him.
The way the elections scheduled for March 29 have been organized are one example of the irrational mind of Mugabe and his cronies.
First Mugabe engaged the opposition MDC through eight months of negotiations, during which some progress was made, only to scuttle the agreements just before elections.
Next, Mugabe created new constituencies and borders but did not make details of this information public to all stakeholders.
Mugabe also has allowed the existing voters roll, which is in absolute shambles, to be used for the elections but refused to allow it to be opened for inspection when Parliament was in session. The opposition parties have had to resort to the high court to compel Mugabe to release the voters roll in a format that makes it possible and convenient to review it within the existing time constraints.
The logical explanation of this type of behavior is Mugabe knows that he will lose significantly, and that he is no longer 100 percent confident his rigging machinery will deliver him the votes he needs to win the elections.
The consistent and persistent reports that some of his trusted cronies are about to jump the sinking Titanic are making Mugabe even more nervous.
Simba Makoni, one of the presidential candidates, represent the only visible face of what is reported and rumored in the grapevine as a soon-to-be massive exodus of defectors from ZANUPF to join Makoni. Mugabe’s biggest nightmare is he does not know who among these cronies will stab him in the back at the elections.
In his increasingly senile state of mind Mugabe is now lashing out even at his shadows. And, like the Spanish Don Quixote, Mugabe is chasing and fighting windmills by constantly blaming sanctions and the opposition MDC for his own incompetence and dementia.
Mugabe has even banned election observers and monitors from the West, particularly the United States, Canada and the European Union, preferring, instead, to invite his friends, cheerleaders and lackeys in SADC and the so-called East. He accuses the West of causing hardships in the country by imposing sanctions.
Ironically Mugabe has not banned the humanitarian aid from the very same West, the EU and the USA.
US Ambassador the Zimbabwe, James McGee, said the US has in 2007 contributed over $170 million to Zimbabwe in food aid. Ambassador McGee said the United States is now feeding one in five Zimbabweans. Non-food aid humanitarian assistance in 2007 equaled $5.1 million and HIV/AIDS programs were increased to $31million in fiscal year 2007, he said.
According Mugabe’s logic, US aid is welcome to Zimbabwe but not election observers! How then does Mugabe explain the difference?
The bottom line is that Zimbabwe is now under the dictatorship of a demented 84-year-old geriatric whose incompetence, erratic and irrational behavior are now wreaking havoc on Zimbabwe.
Millions of Zimbabweans will be voting in the presidential elections on March 29 . Zimbabweans have seen their quality of life deteriorate and plunge to new depths . And there is no doubt among the majority of Zimbabweans who has caused their misery and feudal existence.
They know Mugabe is the cause of most of their problems. Very few Zimbabweans believe Mugabe’s often repeated lie that economic problems in Zimbabwe have been caused by sanctions.
Mugabe’s propagandas machinery, like Hitler’s Information Minister Goebbels, is repeating the same lie over and over in the hope that as, Goebbels projected, Zimbabweans will eventually believe it.
The key questions for Zimbabweans are:
1. Will they allow Mugabe to rig the elections again?
2. Will they accept another presidency of Mugabe knowing very well that elections were rigged and their suffering will worsen under another Mugabe regime?
3. Will Zimbabweans sit and bemoan their fate as a result of another rigged election, or, are Zimbabweans now in the mood to take back their country, their democracy from the evil clutches of the monster called Mugabe?
Whichever way Zimbabweans answer these questions critical times lie ahead. No one can or should allow Mugabe to continue to rule the country, given that he has brought Zimbabwe to the brink of total collapse. If Zimbabwe was a business it would have filed for bankruptcy many years ago, and Mugabe and his minion would have been not only fired but arrested and charged with sabotaging the business.
