Thank you Mugabe: inflation at 1600%

[Bounty]

That's not a typo.

Inflation in Zimbabwe has continued to spiral upwards, leaping to a record annual rate of 1,593.6% in January.

Electricity, gas and other fuels were the items that contributed most to the year-on-year inflation rate, according to the Central Statistics Office.

On a month-on-month basis inflation jumped by 45.4%, compared to the 36.3% rise seen in December.

The country has been hit by an unemployment rate of more than 80% and chronic shortages of food and fuel.

Political tensions are rising as urban workers have been hit by the soaring costs of consumer goods, public transport fares and medical fees.

'Agitated' workers

Doctors and nurses have been on strike since last month, crippling state hospitals and they have now been joined by some teachers and university lecturers.

Last weekend, the top union representing government employees demanded a review of all civil servant salaries, and said if the demand was not met the "agitated" workers would consider protests.

Critics blame President Robert Mugabe's politically-driven policies including the seizure of land from white commercial farmers.

But President Mugabe says Western countries have sabotaged the economy to punish his government for the land seizures.

Zimbabwe's rate of inflation, which the government has dubbed its number one enemy, is the highest in the world.

[Big Phil]

Western countries my ass... it was the Jews

[Uraniun235]

I remember one history professor suggesting that a get-rich-quick scheme that could work in a hyperinflation environment is to borrow like hell and buy as much shit as you can as quickly as you can - as inflation outstrips interest rates, the loans quickly become relatively worthless and repayment becomes relatively simple.

Of course, I rather doubt that people would be offering loans in such an environment, but it was still amusing at the time.

[InnocentBystander]

I remember one history professor suggesting that a get-rich-quick scheme that could work in a hyperinflation environment is to borrow like hell and buy as much shit as you can as quickly as you can - as inflation outstrips interest rates, the loans quickly become relatively worthless and repayment becomes relatively simple.

Of course, I rather doubt that people would be offering loans in such an environment, but it was still amusing at the time.

Its 100% true. Three years ago I met a guy from Zimbabwe, he told a few stories about his family and friends who did this to get nice and wealthy (of course they were all upper class to begin with). He said they would usually buy BMWs (lots of them) to sell later.

[Rye]

It's a good job they got rid of the white people, otherwise they'd be in REAL trouble right now, instead of this temporary setback.

[Netko]

Yes, that is possible. Happened in ex-Yu in the early '90ies. Some people got houses and such out of it. Soon enough, the banks got smart and instituted an foreign currency clause (ie. the credit is actually in foreign currency, but is shown in local currency according to some exchange rate), usually using the Deutch Mark as the foreign currency.

[2000AD]

Doctors and nurses have been on strike since last month, crippling state hospitals and they have now been joined by some teachers and university lecturers.

Zimbabwe has universities?

[Setzer]

I think this would make a nice betting pool. Wager how much worse things will get before Mugabe is overthrown.

[weemadando]

I think this would make a nice betting pool. Wager how much worse things will get before Mugabe is overthrown.

Too long. He retains too much direct control over the military, police and the populace. Its a goddamn mess.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Western countries my ass... it was the Jews

God Damnit, I thought I told you guys earlier I'm taking the blame for everything, I'm the new Jesus! I'll take your blame into myself so you can all be without blame!

[Coyote]

God Damnit, I thought I told you guys earlier I'm taking the blame for everything, I'm the new Jesus! I'll take your blame into myself so you can all be without blame!

Look, everybody! It's Tom Cruise!

[Sean Mulligan]

This article puts Zimbabwe's problems in context. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... cleId=5730

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

This article puts Zimbabwe's problems in context. DRESS YOUR FUCKING LINKS, YOU FUCKING ASSBURGER!

So, how many pages of N+P did you dig back to necro-post a link and not the article itself, you moron?

Zimbabwe's Different Path and Penalty Incurred

By Brendan Stone

Global Research, May 22, 2007
Zimbabwe Watch

Zimbabwe's different path and the penalty it has incurred: The academic and media framing of Zimbabwe's difficulties, and an investigation of external and internal causes.

In the case of Zimbabwe, Mugabe provided journalists with the 'same old' story of a promising African leader that had still gone corrupt, despite high hopes with some at Independence in 1980.
-Willems (2005), 100.

The primary contradiction for the last 500 years has not been between classes but between nations, the poor and the rich ones. It has been a struggle by the west to dominate and control the rest of humanity. While the ordinary people in the west do not participate in the oppression willingly, many of them share the same patronising and superior attitudes of their leaders. Thus even when they support the struggles of the oppressed in the poor world it is with conditions and qualifications that are never applied to them when they face similar circumstances.
-Saddams Execution : The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism? by Kola Odetola

A television news anchor begins a segment on Zimbabwe. Immediately, the viewer is treated to an image of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. His visage quickly triggers a set of memories, etched into the viewer's mind over time by the massive corporate media machine. Starvation, chaos, warfare, corruption, and evil - these are the thoughts the image evokes. We, as viewers, are led to understand that Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has been transformed, in the Economist pun, "from bread basket to basket case."

Zimbabwe does not suffer from any single problem. Scholars and Zimbabwean dissidents, such as Kagoro, agree that the country's problems, complex and interlinked, result from multiple causes. According to Kagoro, and supported by comments from Moss and Patrick, Zimbabwe is experiencing "a state of unprecedented crisis," and "there is no doubt that the legitimacy of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is now seriously disputed in many quarters." Mugabe's policies - economic, political, and social - in short, the whole gamut, are "questionable," or "disastrous."

Charges leveled against the Mugabe government are numerous. Politically, scholars refer to authoritarian state practices, the militarization of politics, governmental immunity from prosecution, selective justice, and the absence of rule of law. Economically, the government is criticized for failing to manage the agrarian sector, for corruption, asset stealing, decline of the agricultural export sector, and general mismanagement leading to capital flight and "brain drain." Zimbabweans are said to suffer "war-like trauma" from state-driven political violence directed against political opponents, use of "food as a weapon," government death squads, ethnic cleansing, and even "genocide" against a rebellious region.

Mainstream scholarship and media claim that Zimbabwe is not a Western-style liberal democracy, but rather, an autocratic dictatorship. The Christian Science Monitor characterizes this viewpoint. Reporting on a recent election, its article begins, "After ruling Zimbabwe for 25 years with an increasingly iron fist, President Robert Mugabe's grip on power just got a whole lot tighter." It suggests that President Mugabe remains in power by repressing his opposition and concludes that, "the danger for Zimbabwe is "that you're relying on one individual and what he decides to do." The recent incident in which Movement for Democratic Change [MDC] opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was beaten by police has only intensified these criticisms.

If 'democracy' is a political system, as in the United States, in which constituents are said to elect, through 'free-and-fair' elections, representatives from competing political parties, in which the power of the government is divided in executive, legislative, and/or judicial branches, then Zimbabwe meets these procedural requirements. Critics often bring attention to alleged election irregularities, disenfranchisement, and political repression in Zimbabwe. While this essay demonstrates that some of these claims are true, on the other hand, many of them originate from the opposition and from external Western sources, and are often disproved or unverified. The elections in Zimbabwe are a contentious issue, but only because the corporate media amplifies complaints that often have little or no basis. The instances of political repression are more overt and, while they are real, Western audiences are not given the full details. Most of the Western public remains unaware that Zimbabwe's government faces a very real security threat from external forces that are far more powerful in economic and military strength.

Naturally, the Western perspective is not the sole perspective, and debate exists as to what is actually occurring in Zimbabwe. The "Evidence" section reviews the evidence in order to determine the degree to which apocalyptic claims about Zimbabwe represent the true situation. Research conducted by Elich clearly corroborates Kagoro, Moss, and Patrick's statements regarding economic decline in Zimbabwe. The discussion of Zimbabwe's political situation, however, is more hotly contested. The "Sokwanele" "pro-democracy group," a political actor in Zimbabwe with a stake in the country's conflict, claims that Zimbabwe's government engages in campaigns of repression, most recently, large-scale housing demolitions. Ankomah, however, having toured Zimbabwe recently, provides an account and analysis that challenges the "Sokwanele" interpretation of events. Vidal supports the alternate analysis, which views the demolitions as a fairly standard, however rushed, urban renewal procedure. On the more direct question of Zimbabwe's level of democracy, this essay contrasts the claims of "election theft" by the Western metropolitan powers over the recent 2005 election, to the testimony of observers on the ground who witnessed the election. The "Evidence" section, then, demonstrates how even basic information about Zimbabwe's political situation is frequently misconstrued, most often in the interests of opposition groups within and outside Zimbabwe. The dominant political party in Zimbabwe, the ZANU-PF, clearly uses every legal, constitutional means available to remain in power. The intense conflict between ZANU and its opposition has occasionally blossomed into violence. In some instances, the government has directed repression against its political opponents. This essay, however, contends that the physical confrontations between the government and opposition are manifestations of a larger geo-political conflict spurred on by the non-conformity of Zimbabwe's government with existing U.S., U.K., and IMF dictates. The considerable Western interference in Zimbabwe's internal politics to a large degree explains the measures undertaken by the government. Western media and states would likely consider these measures justified were they employed by a country friendly to the United States.

To provide the reader with a broader perspective on why the West misconstrues the situation in Zimbabwe, the "Causes" section reviews the wide array of factors that led to the current situation. While some authors, such as Lloyd, place the majority of the blame for Zimbabwe's problems on the indigenous population's electoral choice, Robert Mugabe, historical research by Jacobs, Palmer, and others , brings to the forefront the British colonial legacy in Zimbabwe. They argue that the British conquest and subjugation of Zimbabwe's people, and creation of the repressive settler state of Rhodesia, stunted the economic and political growth of the country and its indigenous people. Colonialism created a "dual economy" in which the indigenous African population inherited the unprofitable, subsistence side of a dual-economy. There, crowded small-scale farmers suffered together on arid land.

The indigenous anti-colonial struggle against the Rhodesian regime, and emergence of a radical African liberation movement, including Zimbabwe's governing ZANU-PF [Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front] party, served in part to steer Zimbabwe's politics away from the relaxed liberal democracies that characterize the developed world. As Palmer notes, the unresolved land issue remains central to Zimbabwe's politics, and fuels political decisions and conflicts today. The intense study of the ZANU-PF's land reform programs conducted by Deininger et. al. offers a balanced view of Zimbabwe's land reform efforts, demonstrating that while the land reform has underperformed according to ideal measures, it has also met with a measure of success in its goals of land redistribution. Rather than land reform as a major cause for Zimbabwe's economic woes, Gibbon, Brett, and others demonstrate that Zimbabwe's choice to adopt IMF economic reforms was most responsible for harming the country's economy. The land reform is not so much harmful in itself, as it serves as a lightning rod, galvanizing metropolitan hostility to the Mugabe government. Moreover, the gap between agrarian reform goals and realities is partly a result of internal opposition by the white farmers. During the entire period of Rhodesia's decline, and thereafter, Ankomah, Elich, and Stamp argue that Britain actively sought to influence Zimbabwe's politics through the white, large-scale farmers, and their "civil society" institutions. Fears of the implications of Zimbabwe's land reform for other countries, such as South Africa, as well as the ZANU-PF's counter-hegemonic discourse, led the Anglo-American powers and allies to suppress Mugabe's government, in the hopes that a more friendly client regime could be installed.

A key claim of this essay is that while Zimbabwe is technically a liberal democracy, widespread economic sabotage, an international campaign of demonization, and direct, artificial, foreign support for the domestic opposition has prevented Zimbabweans from enjoying the positive features of this system of government to the fullest extent. The negative foreign pressure stems not from pre-existing anti-democratic 'sins' of the government, but rather the very serious 'sin' of pursuing an independent foreign, domestic, and economic policy, one that notably involves reclaiming land that fell into white hands during the period of colonization. This argument is particularly compelling in light of the fact that the U.S. supports a number of anti-democratic governments in Africa, particularly Rwanda, without complaint, while creating a media fanfare about events in Zimbabwe. In other words, there is a reversal of cause-and-effect for Zimbabwe's problems. Zimbabwean government repression did not lead to Western economic sanctions and political sabotage, but rather the obverse.

Those who criticize Zimbabwe for being undemocratic because of repression against foreign interference, as well as patronage, and corruption, should be ready to explain which countries are more democratic in this respect. Not only most, if not all African countries, but most, if not all, developed countries use repression against political opponents in certain instances, particularly if these oppositions are perceived as 'foreign,' 'ideological,' or a 'security threat,' and every country in the world suffers from some combination of patronage, corruption, and election irregularities.

Despite the external support in Zimbabwe for anti-government NGOs, media, and political parties, particularly the MDC, the ZANU-PF remains in power, according to Elich, not because it is a dictatorship, but because it is able to mobilize the support of the majority of Zimbabwe's population, who identifies with its political vision. This argument about representation of the electorate introduces a debate as to what governments can do while remaining 'democratic.' Suttner, for example, argues that academics should adapt a special model of democratic transition for those countries born from the midwives of national liberation movements [NLMs]. It is dogmatism to state, as in Zimbabwe's case, that if one party remains strong, and electoral turnover is not likely in the short-term, that a country is not a democracy. Democracies based on NLMs emphasize other forms of rights, such as socio-economic rights. Civil society is more highly developed in South Africa than in Zimbabwe, which, as Moyo demonstrates, becomes relevant in analyzing parties' electoral potential.

Western media and academic scholarship operates with a very clear 'frame' for events in Zimbabwe. Mugabe is portrayed as an autocrat ready to do whatever necessary in order to stay in power. An alternate frame, rarely discussed in Western publications, is that the metropolitan powers, the U.S. and U.K. in particular, seek to use both international institutions, and existing domestic opposition, to topple Mugabe and the ZANU-PF program. The sometimes-violent government response, in a country that emerged from the colonial era with an economy and civil society primordial compared even to that of South Africa, represents the externally-induced, artificial intensification of domestic conflict, and the highest physical manifestation of a hidden international conflict.

Overall, this essay argues that, plagued by continuous Western intervention, the ZANU-PF hegemonic party has constructed a shield around itself, magnifying its presence in the rudimentary civil society, using relations of patronage, and a defiant, 'anti-colonial' platform in order to remain in power. Developing in a manner consistent with other NLMs, ZANU-PF is centralizing, state-interventionist, and jealous of electoral competition. More modern sectors of the economy, and minority regions, have developed limited class opposition to the ZANU-PF. Divisions among these sectors, however, and dependence on foreign backing, have prevented this opposition from consolidating itself in government. This domestic battle between a rural party-movement, on the one side, and some disgruntled urban and elite sectors, on the other, occurs within a political sphere where the government generally follows the law, but the law favours the government. The entire struggle is complicated by both sides' external allies. In short, Zimbabwe's present political and economic situation should be understood in terms of the country's peculiar colonial and post-independence development. Zimbabwe's 'crisis' is not simply the result of voters electing Robert Mugabe, as many Western reports imply. The problem is that Zimbabwe has not been allowed to choose its own course free from interference. Rather, Zimbabwe is a victim of intervention by an entire system of political and economic domination, and bears the scars of the U.S. and Britain's clear and well-documented attempts to circumscribe Zimbabwe's post-independence development in a manner befitting local elites and foreign interests.

Evidence for Problems in Zimbabwe

Chuma has pointed out that the problem in Zimbabwe is a "crisis of framing a crisis." The definition over what exactly is the problem in Zimbabwe, and the level of "crisis," is itself contentious. Objective evidence does indicate that Zimbabwe's economy fares poorly. Since 1999, Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by 33%, more than twice as much contraction as that experienced by several African countries during recent civil wars. By 2003, the poverty rate had more than doubled from its 1996 figure of 35%. The production of tobacco, a key export crop, has plummeted. Zimbabwe also continues to suffer record levels of inflation. In fact, during the 1990s, Zimbabwe faced a rise in the price of basic goods and, at the same time, a 40 percent decline in manufacturing. Clearly, the economy is not performing as well as it could be. Recent news articles, in publications such as the BBC, highlight the 2006 annual inflation rate of nearly 1,600%, the highest in the world. Economically, then, the country is indeed a "basket case." Evidence for political repression and a lack of democracy, on the other hand, serves as a locus for more intense debate.

***IF YOU WANT TO READ THE REST, CLICK THE LINK***
-AV

[Bounty]

Did you just quote your own sig

And I though there was a bit of leeway for very long articles?

Anyway, I skimmed the linked text and it looks like it's nothing more than Mugabe's excuses regurgitated.

[Enforcer Talen]

Looks like he quoted his profile bits, too.

Mod? Can we get a reformat?

[Sea Skimmer]

Such old news, the inflation rate is now 3,714%
link

[Siege]

Out of morbid curiosity, does anyone know what the highest-ever inflation rate in recorded world history is?

[fgalkin]

Out of morbid curiosity, does anyone know what the highest-ever inflation rate in recorded world history is?

Post WWII-Hungary had an inflation rate of 41,900,000,000,000,000%, producing this gem, a 100 quintillion pengő bank note.


Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Tribun]

Astounding!

That makes the hyper-inflation of 1923 in Germany look like a small matter. Over 3700%! The money now literally isn't worth the paper it is printed on. But of course Mugabe will do his usual excuse by blaming it all on "the Others" (most likely the West). Btw., Zimbabwe didn't appear much in the news recently. Are they building a wall at the border?

[Darth Wong]

He's not making headlines because people don't care about tragedies that seem inevitable. It's the same reason why a million more AIDS deaths in Africa won't make the news.

[fgalkin]

Astounding!

That makes the hyper-inflation of 1923 in Germany look like a small matter.

Actually, no it doesn't. The inflation rate in the Weimar republic was 3.25 million percent. It does however make Yeltsin's 1992 hyperinflation of 2,520% look small.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[K. A. Pital]

Holy shit. That must top the Russian 90's inflation (~2500%). Absolutely incredible.

The economy must be totally barter by now, I think.

[Tribun]

Astounding!

That makes the hyper-inflation of 1923 in Germany look like a small matter.

Actually, no it doesn't. The inflation rate in the Weimar republic was 3.25 million percent. It does however make Yeltsin's 1992 hyperinflation of 2,520% look small.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Ok, I checked the numbers, it was actually 32.400 % in 1923(where did you get these million numbers? Are you sure you haven't read a decimal wrong?). All right, Zimbabwe isn't there yet. But I guess it will be only a matter of time now.

[Mange]

Astounding!

That makes the hyper-inflation of 1923 in Germany look like a small matter.

Actually, no it doesn't. The inflation rate in the Weimar republic was 3.25 million percent. It does however make Yeltsin's 1992 hyperinflation of 2,520% look small.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Ok, I checked the numbers, it was actually 32.400 % in 1923(where did you get these million numbers? Are you sure you haven't read a decimal wrong?). All right, Zimbabwe isn't there yet. But I guess it will be only a matter of time now.

From where have you got yours? The inflation rate was more than one million percent in 1923.

[Netko]

The banknote with the largest denomination in the world, expressed purely with digits that is:


Net result of the '89-'94 hyperinflation in Yugoslavia: one novi (new) dinar from '94 was worth 1E27 to 1.3E27 '89 dinars.