WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2002-03-20 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/20/2002 8:50:19 AM
Zimbabwe"s Economy on its knees
SAPA-AFP via News24 (SA) (124)| March 19, 2002
Harare – Zimbabwe’s economy has been brought to its knees amid the ongoing political turmoil and cannot recover on its own, according to economists, who doubt much foreign assistance will be forthcoming.
Western donors and international financial institutions are increasingly estranged from the government of longtime ruler Robert Mugabe, returned to power last week in an election widely condemned as fraudulent.
“Zimbabwe is on its knees. Mugabe offered absolutely no solution,” economist John Robertson, who supports the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told AFP on Tuesday.
“We are not going to get assistance.”
When asked to comment on Mugabe’s repeated calls for Zimbabwe to strive for economic self-sufficiency, Robertson said: “The crisis has reached such a level by now that I do not see how we can get out of it on our own. Mugabe is the worst news for the economy.”
Tony Hawkins said: “The MDC were the only ones who could deliver access to the foreign aid, investment and debt restructuring without which there can be no sustained economic recovery.”
Farai Zizhou, chief economist of the Confederation of Zimbabwean Industries (CZI), was more sceptical of the benefits of aid that
might come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank.
“The IMF has been very good at giving lessons and dictating its conditions without understanding the constraints of our economy,”Zizhou said.
Mugabe, who led the 1970s Marxist guerrilla war against Ian Smith’s segregationist regime in the then Rhodesia, shed his socialist ideals 11 years after independence from Britain in 1980, agreeding to an IMF structural adjustment program in 1991.
Economic liberalisation stimulated growth but caused prices to skyrocket, hurting the poorest sections of the population and eventually leading to food riots.
The IMF suspended disbursements in 1999, objecting to excessive government spending. In early 2000, Mugabe launched his controversial “fast-track” land reforms, seizing white-owned farms and resettling them with marginalised blacks at a time when parliamentary elections were looming and the MDC looked set to unseat a number of ruling party MPs.
The often violent land invasions were spearheaded by veterans of the liberation war and continued with Mugabe’s tacit approval even when courts ruled them illegal, and police mostly turned a blind eye.
The IMF programme, combined with drought, has devastated the agricultural sector, turning Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, into a net food importer. More than half a million people are in need of emergency food aid.
Throughout his campaign for re-election, Mugabe railed against former colonial power Britain, accusing Prime Minister Tony Blair of bankrolling his opponent, the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai.
He claimed that Zimbabwe did not need Western aid and won votes of sympathy – if not promises of aid – from African allies including South Africa and other neighbours nervous over the possible ripple effects of Zimbabwe’s crisis on their own economies.
“Banking on aid from Africa and developing trade with African and Asian countries is an option but a limited one,” Zizhou said. “Until recently our main business dealings were with the West.”
In 2001, Zimbabwe stopped repaying its debts, accusing the IMF of protecting Western interests and those of Zimbabwe’s white minority.
Exports, the main source of foreign exchange along with tourism – also hard hit – have fallen off more than 30%, according to the central bank.
The currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, is weakening steadily. The official exchange rate of $55 to the greenback has no grounding in reality, since a dollar will fetch Z$310 on the parallel market.
Thus imports are extremely expensive and exports far less lucrative. “The government needs to take immediate steps to revive the export sector and revive agriculture,” Zizhou said, advocating a lifting of price controls, which have served only to fuel inflation and lead to shortages.
Analysts also stress the need to restore investor confidence, for which “a certain degree of peace and unity is necessary”, according to Kenzias Chibota, president of the Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ).