:
Items About
Areas That Could Break Out Into War
November 30, 2007: The government's own inflation
data put the inflation rate at 7,600 percent a year. Economic analysts outside
of Zimbabwe think it may be even higher, 8,500 percent to perhaps as high as
15,000 percent. An IMF "forecast" says the real rate could reach 100,000
percent. Boggling? It's beyond boggling. All of these figures are so large that
in terms of policy and poverty-- the statistical differences are meaningless.
Recently a Zimbabwean government official admitted that the real inflation rate
is "incalculable" because there are so few goods available in the country.
Staples like meat, bread and cooking oil are not available in retail grocery
stores. Gasoline (except for government officials and friends of the ruling
ZANU-PF party) disappeared many months ago.
A statistic that really does matter is
unemployment. No one really knows what the unemployment rate is in Zimbabwe.
Visit the Web and you will find estimates from fifty to eighty percent. As
always, you have to ask not only who did the survey but what constitutes
employment. Zimbabwe's once flourishing tourist industry has all but
disappeared. In 1999, 1.4 million tourists visited Zimbabwe. Now there are no
tourists. An estimated 200,000 Zimbabweans once worked in a tourism-related job
(hotels, restaurants, etc.). Almost everyone agrees, however, that commercial
agriculture jobs are (or were) a key component in Zimbabwe's economy. Since
2000, Zimbabwe has lost between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs in its once productive
agricultural sector. In 2003 the UN reported approximately 100,000 farm workers
were still employed on commercial farms. That was a decrease of 250,000 from an
estimated 350,000 workers employed by commercial farms in 2000 prior to
president Mugabe's first "land redistribution" program, his "agrarian
revolution" called the "Third Chimurenga," or "liberation struggle." The vast
majority of those farms were owned by whites. The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers
Union reported that there were approximately 4,500 white-owned commercial farms
in Zimbabwe in 2000. The higher agricultural worker job loss figure is based a
recent estimate, which means it is a very iffy statistic, like Zimbabwe's
actual inflation rate. In 2000 the UN estimated that the 350,000 farm workers
supported roughly two million people. Using the same ratio (5.7 per worker)
that means 2.28 million people who once had well-paying jobs (by Zimbabwean
standards) now have little or no income. That is out of a 2005 population of
around 13 million people. Many of these once well-employed remain "living on
the land" as squatters or "tenant farmers without rights." They do grow some
crops but their situation is "hand to mouth," meaning they are now subsistence
farmers. These Zimbabweans have effectively lost a century's worth of economic
development. Indeed, Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe has taken what should be
one of Africa's wealthiest countries and turned it into an economic and
political wasteland.
Many Zimbabweans are leaving the country, but just
how many is another number that is very difficult to pin down. . The UNHCR
estimates that three million Zimbabweans have left Zimbabwe since 2000, with
the vast majority going to Botswana and South Africa. Two years ago, it was
estimated that one million Zimbabweans
were living in South Africa. South Africans believe that a few hundred
Zimbabweans (called "asylum seekers") attempt to cross the border illegally
every day. Attempt is an important word, because the South African government
is now telling asylum seekers to "stay home." The "few hundred" may be a
conservative estimate. In July 2007, it was believed that the figure could be
as high as 3000 a day. If two hundred Zimbabweans illegally enter South Africa
every day that is 700,000 a year, so maybe the anecdotal "a few hundred" a day
is a reasonable average. The Reception and Support Center of the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that from January to the end of July
2007 it repatriated 117,737 Zimbabweans from South Africa to Zimbabwe.
"Repatriated" means the refugees have been sent back to Zimbabwe. That's a lot
of repatriations.
The refugee problem has saddled Zimbabwe's
neighbors with some touchy problems, and "repatriation" is one of them. The
term from the Zimbabwean exodus cropping up in official statements is the
Zimbabwean "migration." Well, technically it is a migration, one spawned by
massive corruption, state-sponsored violence, inter-tribal violence (some of it
stoked by the government), poverty, and political failure, meaning Zimbabwe is
a war zone where the government is at war with its own people. But South Africa,
Zambia, and Botswana (the neighboring states to which Zimbabweans are fleeing)
want to avoid a confrontation with the Mugabe government over its policies. The
Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional collective to which
Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe belong, does not want to take any
official position on the migrant (refugee) problem. This has disappointed many
critics of the Mugabe government. This situation, however, is all too common in
Africa and elsewhere in the world. Regional collectives hesitate to condemn a
thug government because they fear that will mean they have to act to get rid of
him and that could involve a lot of money and bloodshed. That's a legitimate
reason to hem and haw, but most of the time there is another, less legit
concern. Many of the regional group's members are dictatorships or
kleptocracies themselves and they do not want to "set a precedent" for removing
a dictatorship or a corrupt government. Mugabe's government has made a security
alliance with fellow SADC member Angola, which fields some very well-trained
paramilitary forces. With Angola providing security training to Mugabe, SADC is
not going to act overtly against Mugabe's regime. The only country in SADC
really capable of making a difference within Zimbabwe is South Africa. South
Africa has stated that it will help facilitate a political dialog and hopefully
create conditions that foster political reconciliation within Zimbabwe, but it
doesn't want to get involved directly in Zimbabwe's internal troubles.
At the moment Zimbabwe's immediate neighbors
classify the Zimbabwean refugees as "economic migrants." This means they do not
have the same international status as a "political refugee." If a refugee is
classified as a political refugee subject to prosecution (or persecution) if he
returns to the country from which he fled, then that individual can usually
appeal for asylum (in the country to which he fled or in an another country
willing to accept him). Not so if the refugee is declared an "economic
migrant." It is often tough to determine who is an economic migrant and who is
a political refugee. No doubt many, if not most, of the Zimbabweans who have
fled are really economic migrants, but given the Mugabe government's
willingness to use violence against its opponents (via groups like the Zimbabwe
National Liberation War Veterans Association, aka ZINLWA) a substantial
minority do risk prosecution or worse (physical attack, murder) if they are
returned to Zimbabwe. This is a huge political problem, but so far Zimbabwe's
neighbors have avoided directly addressing it. Is this a potential spark for a
regional war? No, not likely. But Zimbabwe's neighbors are increasingly worried
about spillover violence and economic damage from Robert Mugabe's self-made war
zone. -- Austin Bay