Talking about the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, one of the more egregious examples of how Africans can’t seem to run a country or set things right when one of their number screws the pooch. Zimbabwe under Mugabe has become the poster child for how not to do things.
Formerly the “breadbasket of Africa,” the once prosperous net exporter of food and others staples is now a basket case of a different sort. This sad news report from the AP informs us of some of what is going down in the former Rhodesia. Or, rather, going up: the “official” inflation rate is now running 2.2 million percent.
Yes, you read that right: 2.2 million percent. But that’s the official rate. The actual rate is a tad higher:
…a 4-pound bag of sugar cost about 20 billion Zimbabwe dollars — $1 — at the government’s fixed price, and 90 billion on the black market $4.50 at the bank exchange rate, or $1 at the black market exchange — in a country where unskilled workers earn up to 200 billion Zimbabwean dollars, about $10, a month.However, few have jobs: unemployment has reached 80 percent.
Gosh, if I was paid in Zimbabwe dollars, I’d be a billionaire many times over. Hmm. Maybe I’ll move there…
Not to be callous, but what happens in Zimbabwe just does not concern me overly much. I feel badly for people who have to live there. But not so badly as to waste any money on the various charity schemes for Africa.
I’d say: let them become colonies again. Of course, Britain, France, and Germany, the principal colonial powers, probably are not much interested in having their old colonies back. Be fun to ask them, though, just to see their horrible white guilt in play as they spout pieties about freedom and the racism implied in taking up that old White Man’s Burden.
