The Legacy of Robert Mugabe

Spin is an inherent part of storytelling. Everybody has a perspective, and the way they choose to spin a story reveals a lot about the storyteller.
Robert Mugabe has personally done more to destroy Zimbabwe than any of the numerous factors he blames for taking one of Africa's most productive exporting nations and placing it firmly on the road to just another hopeless African basket case in the space of approximately 5 years. At the heart of the problem lies his land redistribution program in which white owned farms were to be purchased at market prices and turned over to the black majority in a bid to equalize things following years of civil war and minority white rule. He went about this in a methodical way for a short time, but it didn't take long for him to resort to outright seizure of Zimbabwe's most fertile land in order to turn it over to political cronies with little interest in maintaining the productivity of the farms. This has led to widespread food shortages and much national chaos as the black farm workers suddenly found themselves unemployed. Those farm workers fortunate enough to have acquired a piece of property from this program found that although they had land, they lacked the proper equipment to farm the land as anything of value was either looted by political cronies or carried off by the former owners. This goes a long way towards explaining how Zimbabwe went from being a net agricultural exporter to a net importer so quickly. Of course, this is my spin on the subject, but one thing I have found is that financial markets are very efficient when it comes to cutting through spin and getting to the truth of the matter. I found the following story this morning:

Zimbabwe to Replace Dollar, World's Worst Performer Since 2000
2005-10-20 11:03 (New York)
By Lukanyo Mnyanda
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe plans to dump its dollar, the
world's worst performing currency over the last five years, from
next year, the central bank said.
The bank has been working on the introduction of a new
currency and is ``pleased to give notice that this will be done in
the new year'', central bank Governor Gideon Gono said in his
monetary policy statement today, without giving reasons.
To buy a U.S. dollar at the start of 2000, Zimbabweans had to
pay about 38 of their dollars. A U.S. dollar cost them 26,004.45
of their dollars at the rate set on Oct. 17, a 99 percent drop,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Zimbabwe dollar has fallen 78 percent this year so far,
the worst performance of currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
Export earnings have slumped since President Robert Mugabe's
government started seizing white-owned commercial farms in 2002.
The economy contracted by 40 percent between 1999 and 2003,
according to International Monetary Fund data, the most recent
available.
The central bank will introduce a "more flexible'' system of
managing the currency to ease shortages of foreign exchange, Gono
said in his statement. The bank currently manages it by selling
foreign currency at bi-weekly auctions.
Zimbabweans should ``hold cash sparingly'' to ensure a smooth
changeover, Gono said.

Spin away Mr. Mugabe, for the financial markets have reached a verdict: your country is in shambles.
The rich irony in this is that just this last weekend the U.N. invited Mr. Mugabe to speak at a hunger conference in Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization. I heard that he received a standing ovation led by none other than Hugo Chavez, the generalissimo of Venezuela.

You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.