First Impression of AIDS
For the last two week or so, Wellington and I have been anxiously awaiting the results of the Zimbabwean elections. It’s been a huge story in South Africa. Wellington has been my roommate for the first two months I’m in South Africa. He is a native Zimbabwean and because our living quarters are pretty secluded from much of anything, we’ve been spending a lot of time together. We’ve spent many nights staying up late talking about random things, mostly about Zimbabwe.
Wellington’s purpose here is significantly greater than mine. While I’m here pretty much on vacation and just exploring life, he’s here to find out how Zimele works and to try to start the same thing over in Zimbabwe. Wellington loves to talk about Zimbabwe and even though I’m in South Africa, I feel like I’ve been learning much more about Zimbabwe than South Africa.
The situation in Zimbabwe right now is pretty bleak. The inflation rate is at an astronomical 155,000% and unemployment is at 80%. As an example of the extreme inflation in Zimbabwe, from the time Wellington has been here (one month), the bus fare for his children to go to school has gone from 5 million Zimbabwe dollars per day to 50 million Zimbabwe dollars. Imagine if the NYC subway fare went from $2 to $20 in a single month! The economy is on the verge of collapsing primarily because of the current President, Mugabe.
Approximately five years ago, Mugabe came up with a brilliant plan to redistribute the farms away from the whites and give it back to the blacks. Some people say that this is what started the entire collapse of the Zimbabwe economy. I understand some of the reasoning behind the move because it was the blacks’ land in the first place and was “stolen” by the whites, but the move itself was short sighted. The white farms were a big reason the Zimbabwe economy was still passable. Mugabe didn’t think about the decades and decades that it took the farm owners to build the farms up to what they were at that time. The fact was that Mugabe not only kicked the whites out of their homes, but let unskilled people take over their farms.
Imagine if this happened in the United States. Since farming was a big ingredient to the Zimbabwe economy, imagine if the American Indians were given the companies that made the US economy function. So an American Indian would go into the GE building, kick out the CEO, take over the building by force and declare himself the new CEO of GE. What would happen to the US economy if this happened to every company? Sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened in Zimbabwe.
Inexperienced farm owners took over prosperous farms and totally decimated them. One farm owned by a white man, was now taken over by two inexperienced black farmers. One farmer would see that he had a water pump, but the irrigation pipes were on another farm now. Instead of trying to work with the other farmer to get both their farms working like it did in the past, they would sell the water pump and the irrigation pipes because their thinking was that if the farms were taken away from them, at least they would have that money. Even the ones that tried to make the farms work, couldn’t make them as efficient as they were in the past, primarily because they didn’t have the experience.
Mugabe has done many other questionable actions that forced foreign investors to not come in with any outside money. Who would start a company in Zimbabwe if they knew that it could be taken away from them at any time? Mugabe recently passed a law stating that all companies in Zimbabwe needed to be owned 51% by native Zimbabweans. So if you were a foreigner that worked hard to build up a company in Zimbabwe, literally, overnight 51% of it was taken away and given to someone else.
I was talking to Wellington about this and he said that at least when the whites had the land, the blacks were surviving. Now, even though the blacks have all the land, they can’t afford to buy food because of the inflation. Much of the reason the inflation is so lofty is because Mugabe prints money like its Monopoly money. Recently, Mugabe printed millions and millions of dollars to fund his reelection campaign.
Wellington has a huge task on hand in Zimbabwe. Much of Zimele’s self help programs are based on saving money and loans. In Zimbabwe, that isn’t a viable option. For example, if ten million Zimbabwe Dollars will buy you one loaf of bread today and tomorrow, it will only buy you half a loaf of bread, why would you save that money? Why would you loan money if you knew that it would only be worth half of what it was when paid back?
There is hope with the election that just passed though. Much of Mugabe’s power came because his party had control of their Parliament as well, so whenever he made up a law, it would pass right through with no opposition. The latest results of the election show that his party no longer has control. However, the results of the presidential election still haven’t been released. The problem is that even if Mugabe is out of power, what does the next president need to do to fix this mess? There’s a lot of work to be done to get Zimbabwe even close to normal.
People see South Africa going in the same manner. There is a very popular politician by the name of Zuma who is campaigning for the presidency. He has the same mentality as Mugabe (give the blacks what’s rightfully theirs) and some are scared that the same thing may happen in South Africa as what happened in Zimbabwe. Many of the educated and skilled (including blacks) are leaving South Africa, not only because of the possibility of a Zuma-led government, but because they are losing faith in the South African economy. If all of the educated leave the country, what will happen? Hopefully, people will learn from Zimbabwe.
