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Zimbabwe is on the brink of collapse

IT WAS once billed the 'pearl' of Africa.

During those good old days, its road, water and electricity network could easily match the high standards of UAE's infrastructure, not to mention healthcare and education. But just six years down the line, the same cannot be said, for it has become a barrow, bucket and bag economy.

Now it's a country on its deathbed and unless there is a dramatic turn in political events leading to normalisation of relations with the rest of the world, there's little reason to expect any sort of recovery. Welcome to Zimbabwe.

A documentary on human flight from Zimbabwe was recently featured on Cable News Network (CNN) and this brought stark reality about the situations bedevilling the troubled country to the fore. We saw clips of families hiding in bushes to evade security patrol and cutting barbed wires used as border demarcations before fleeing into neighbouring countries.

I have to admit it almost brought tears to my eyes watching those poor ordinary citizens running away due to ills brought about by the country's leaders who are sitting high and square in their palatial homes. According to the documentary, an estimated 4.5 million Zimbabweans have fled the country since 1997. Most have moved to South Africa and settled in squatter camps, others to Mozambique, Botswana, Europe and the US.

Zimbabwe currently has the worst-performing economy in the world. The ever increasing inflation has hit record 12,000 per cent, according to the CNN report. Let me make it simple for you. About eight years ago, the Zimbabwean dollar to the US green buck was 12:1. Exchange rates over the period have fallen to about 10,000:1 today.

One local recently told BBC News that the price tag for a single banana today is equivalent to what she paid seven years ago for a two-bedroom house rent, while a loaf of bread today is about 50 times more expensive, than it was one year ago. But how did it get to be like this? You ask.

Some say the economic problems have been brought about by the country's top man, President Robert Mugabe, particularly after he introduced land reform programme way back in 1990's. At 83 years old, Mugabe, who has led this country since independence in 1980, is still ruling with an iron fist.

His government worked to shift ownership of most of the country's most productive farmlands, which largely remained in 'white' hands after the country's independence in 1979. By 1999, the government went full throttle and unveiled plans to seize land without compensating owners. Hundreds of farms were taken over by local people, but often by senior government officials.

This led to collapse of production of major export goods like grain and tobacco, eventually there was a food crisis and a battering of the economy as foreign exchange earnings slumped both from farming and tourism. Mugabe's government also introduced a bill to give 'blacks' majority ownership of foreign firms, including mines and banks.

The president who has continued to cite his country's ills as foreign sabotage, recently announced that he would defend his seat in the country's next year's general elections. Today, walking down any busy street in Zimbabwe gives one that desperate feeling. According to news reports, empty shelves in supermarkets are a common sight in most of the times and prices are skyrocketing for goods that are available. Long unending queues of people waiting for public transport has become a norm for there is no petrol and regular bus services are a luxury.

One interesting thing I noted from the CNN report was that the presenter said despite the inhuman conditions in Zimbabwe, other African leaders have remained mum and are not criticising their fellow leader. Even the International Crisis Group (ICG) recently called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) group of nations to discuss ways to persuade Mugabe to step down.

But it's important to realise that African leaders have launched an initiative aimed at mediating between Mugabe and Zimbabwe's opposition parties, in the hope of reaching a political solution that would end the country's turmoil.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe's economy is surviving in Intensive Care Unit, thanks to the ingenuity and tolerance of people still in the country and the remittances sent back by those who have left.