Zimbabwe's Useless Money

Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by. Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers, hawkers and black-market hustlers, eating just a meal or two a day, their hollowed cheeks a testament to their hunger.

Horrific. Mugabe has destroyed the country in order to retain power.

inflation surpassing what independent economists say is an almost unimaginable 40 million percent

40,000,000% is obscene.

Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed. (Had it left the currency alone, $1 would now be worth about 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.)
10 trillion Z-dollars. Look at that figure.

Basic public services, already devastated by an exodus of professionals in recent years, are breaking down on an ever larger scale as tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, garbage collectors and janitors have simply stopped reporting to their jobs because their salaries, more worthless literally by the hour, no longer cover the cost of taking the bus to work.
And Mugabe lives in splendor behind walls.

Clues to the calamitous state of the country can be found even in recent articles tucked into Mr. Mugabe’s mouthpiece, The Herald, the only daily newspaper he has allowed to keep publishing.

Zimbabwe devalues currency; 10B becomes 1 dollar

Dropping ten zeroes, Zimbabwe will usher in a new currency. It certainly will make carrying currency easier.

A handshake, or ... ?

A dialogue between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai was announced. Notice the handshake: insencere?

Zimbabwe Can't Paper Over Its Million-Percent Inflation Anymore

Zimbabwe's central bank stopped posting inflation figures in January, when it stood at a relatively modest 100,580%. A loaf of bread costs 30 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Wow. 30 billion of anything for a loaf of bread is incredible.

Zimbabwe now has a plethora of different bills, most of which have negligible value. An accountant by profession, the MDC treasurer Mr. Mangoma says billions are rarely used in his line of work anymore and have been replaced by quadrillions – a million billion. "Our economy is too crazy to understand," says Mr. Mangoma.

[Elton Mangoma, treasurer for Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.]

A quadrillion?

U.S. and British Diplomats Held by Zimbabwe Police

This seems to push things quite far, attacking diplomatic personnel.

Zimbabwean police detained U.S. and British diplomats on Thursday, slashing the tires of their cars after they visited victims of political violence ahead of a presidential election run-off, the U.S. embassy said. "Police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed the tires, reached in and grabbed telephones from my personnel, and the war veterans (Mugabe's supporters) threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out and accompanied police to a station nearby," U.S. Ambassador James McGee said in an interview on CNN.

Pure intimidation; but of diplomats?

In an indicator of Zimbabwe's rapid economic decline, its dollar currency plunged to a new low of between 995 million and 1.45 billion to the greenback on Thursday from an average 700 million at the beginning of the week.

Incredible.

Zimbabwe police free Tsvangirai

A long, drawn-out process in Zimbabwe: elections that Mugabe seems to have lost, but which he will not allow himself to lose.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, has been freed after being detained for more than eight hours by the police. Tsvangirai said that he was released without charge late on Wednesday. “It is nothing but the usual harassment which is totally unnecessary," Tsvangirai said. "We have seen worse things than this." He was detained by police earlier during the day with several of his supporters while campaigning in the presidential run-off vote.

And he has: there have been pictures of him after beatings. Takes a lot of courage.

Speaking earlier from the police station in southwestern Zimbabwe where the group were being held, Job Sibanda, a party lawyer, said Tsvangirai had been accused of rallying supporters. "They are accusing him of addressing a rally at St Paul's [near Lupane] without authorisation," Sibanda said.

Continuous harassment.

Looking ahead to a post-election transition, Tsvangirai said his government will reform the civil service, judiciary and security forces, but he pledged not to purge pro-Mugabe officials.

Kofi Annan made a point of saying that even after winning the MDC would need to work with Mugabe. So Tsvangirai has listened, and, perhaps, learned from the deblace in Iraq.

Zimbabwe Rival Is a Flawed but Enduring Leader

Mr. Mugabe contemptuously mocks Mr. Tsvangirai for not having joined the guerrilla struggle in his youth, and the state-owned newspaper — a mouthpiece for the governing party — recently belittled him as a coward and Western stooge with “a big black nose” and “chubby and pimply cheeks.”

Big black nose? Seems a common trait.

He rose through the ranks of the mine workers union and in 1988 became secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. Stephen Chan, a professor of international relations at the University of London, describes in his book, “Citizen of Africa: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai” (Fingerprint Cooperative, 2005), how Mr. Tsvangirai, a pragmatic social democrat, turned the congress into voice for workers at a time when the and the International Monetary Fund were pushing “structural adjustment programs” that required African governments to keep a lid on spending, including wages.

The World Bank and IMF did engage in a sort of social engineering, of enforcing economic policies, which were not necessarily beneficial for the peoples of countries the organizations engaged.

In 2005, the party — already damaged by internal discord — fractured, with some accusing Mr. Tsvangirai of having authoritarian tendencies and tolerating violence against those who challenged him, allegations that he strongly denies.

But the opposition was divided, and at a critical time. Zimbabwe’s economy spiraled downward and Mr. Mugabe’s government carried out a brutal strategy to damage the opposition’s political base in 2005, destroying the homes of hundreds of thousands of poor people in urban settlements.

Talk of hardball tactics to retain power; ruthless.

Now, Mr. Tsvangirai says he is heading back to Zimbabwe with a sense of foreboding about his own safety and the prospects for democracy. Some analysts believe that a military coup would be likely if he won. Mr. Tsvangirai warned that if Mr. Mugabe’s government shut down dissent “some of us who are advocates of a nonviolent democracy will become irrelevant.”

No majority for Mugabe party in Zimbabwe recount

President Robert Mugabe's party has failed to secure control of Zimbabwe's parliament in a partial recount of the March 29 election, results showed on Saturday, handing the ruling party its first defeat in 28 years.

The question is if Mugabe will accept this decision. Evidence, so far, shows him defiant.

The commission had ordered the recount after ZANU-PF accused election officials of taking bribes to undercount votes for Mugabe and his ruling party and committing other electoral fraud. A number of election officials have been arrested.

On Friday, Mugabe resorted to strong measures used in the past to keep the opposition in check, in what Human Rights Watch said was a stepped up "campaign of organised terror and torture against opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans".

The government denies it is waging a violent campaign.

Armed riot police raided the MDC's headquarters and detained scores of people in the toughest measures against the opposition since the disputed elections.

Mugabe, a hero of the independence struggle, accuses the opposition of conspiring with Western critics to end his almost three decades in power, which began with high hopes that Zimbabwe would become an African model of democratic and economic success.

Today, Zimbabweans face severe shortages of basic goods and an inflation rate of 165,000 percent -- the world's highest.

In Zimbabwe, Raid on Opposition Party and Election Monitors

Hardball

Zimbabwean officials fear prosecution if Mugabe loses

Current Events -- and not current

This one goes back a bit, but is quite relevant. From 28 April 2007

Crackdown in Zimbabwe Is Said to Intensify

Zimbabwe is enveloped in turmoil after recent elections that Mugabe's party lost; Mugabe himself might have lost the presidential vote. In a sign of the Zanu-PF's imbecility, try this one out. Morgan Tsvangirai is the opposition's leader, head of the Movement for Democratic Change.

Mr. Tsvangirai claims to have won last month’s election outright, but Mr. Mugabe’s party has demanded a recount of the vote, even though no official results have yet been released.

So how does one call for a recount of a result that hasn't been announced? Sounds strange.

...it is unclear whether Zimbabwe’s neighbors — many of them with political or fraternal bonds with Mr. Mugabe, a hero of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle against white rule — can or will do much to defuse the tense standoff.

That is the major problem: Mugabe's party (ZANU), and that of Joshua Nkomo (ZAPU) overthrew the hated white Rhodesian government. African leaders are loathe to dethrone him. Anti-colonialism was the vehicle through which many southern Africans threw out white oppressors and gained independence; that includes Zambia and South Africa.

Of course that is now history, and Mandela had a successor. Yet traces of racism remain. This crock is from that bastion of racism, the John Birch Society (the Internet makes finding information easy, yet the searcher must be careful to evaluate the results).

As President Jimmy Carter’s emissary to Africa, Young played a pivotal role — along with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other Carter administration officials — in enthroning Mugabe’s terror regime and turning much of the Dark Continent into the nightmarish slaughterhouse of chaos and terror it has become.

Reference is made to Andrew Young, UN Ambassador in the Carter administration. But, the Dark Continent? My goodness, it isn't 1930 any longer. But the JBS has a particular point of view.

How could Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, a thriving, vibrant, multi-cultural example of Western-style civilization, once a shining beacon for Africa, have turned into hell on Earth?

Multi-cultural ? That isn't spin; that is outright lying.

a 50 Million Zimbabwean dollar bill

Zimbabwe's inflation. 50 million Z bucks = 1 US dollar, and that's not saying much, considering how the greenback is doing these days.

+ El Gobierno de Zimbabwe puso en circulación un billete de 50 millones, que equivale a un dólar estadounidense, como medida desesperada para tratar de estabilizar la economía del país africano.

Bob on a precipice, maybe

Wow. So it is true, maybe.

Mugabe Is Said to Be in Talks About a Possible Exit By THE NEW YORK TIMES 57 minutes ago

Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a diplomat and a political analyst said.

Mugabe out?

Wow. So it is true, maybe.

Mugabe Is Said to Be in Talks About a Possible Exit by THE NEW YORK TIMES 57 minutes ago

Advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe are in talks with the opposition leader amid signs that Mr. Mugabe may be preparing to resign, a diplomat and a political analyst said.

Zimbabwe stands 'on a precipice'

Not so fast; I spoke that it was 'curtains for Bob,' but, not quite, yet, anyway. Mugabe is saying that the opposition saying it has won is 'an attempted coup.' Strong words, indicative of his determination to not lose, and perhaps of how he'll work.

It’s curtains for Bob

Wow! Next thing, Kim Jong Il will retire. The Johannesburg Times reports Mugabe has lost. BBC isn't on top of the story, though the NY Times is, to my surprise.

Opposition Claims Win in Zimbabwe on Unofficial Tally

By THE NEW YORK TIMES 17 minutes ago [as of 10.02pm] -Zimbabwe’s main opposition party said that unofficial results showed a landslide victory over Robert Mugabe, who has led this nation for 28 years.

I was getting ready to dis the Old Grey Lady, but it came through (knows more about Zimbabwe than about Argentina, though).