Zimbabwe is suffering from economic crisis

Angus Shaw

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis had “passed the point of no return” for recovery without basic internal reforms and substantial international help, the U.S. ambassador said in an interview published last Sunday.

Calls by President Robert Mugabe for improved relations and “bridge building” with foreign nations so far had made no progress, Christopher Dell was quoted as saying in the independent Standard newspaper.

“It is our hope that in the face of the massive crisis that it has brought on itself, the government here will recognize that it needs to do more than talk about bridge building,” Dell was quoted as saying.

The United States was ready to help, but Zimbabwe made no move toward reforms or dialogue, he said.

“It is really just a question of metaphors. There is no reality to that. Empty words about dialogue are really of little interest,” the ambassador said.

Dell said he had been denied access to government officials with whom the United States has “a fundamental divergence of views” over the breakdown of the rule of law and the government’s disastrous economic policies that led to acute shortages of gasoline, food and essential commodities and spurred hyperinflation to above 780 percent, the highest rate in the world.

He said the abuse of property rights by seizures of land and other private assets scared off investors and vital foreign financial assistance, though the United States remained the largest humanitarian aid donor — US$74 million (euro62 million) last year.

Dell said in his 18 months in Zimbabwe, not a single U.S. investor had approached his office for information on Zimbabwe’s business prospects and just 25 American firms were still doing business in the country.

Much talk in Zimbabwe centered on when the country would finally collapse, Dell told Maruziva.

“In this context, what is truly important ... is the growing recognition that Zimbabwe has already passed the point of no return in its ability to recover from its crisis without substantial outside help,” Dell said.

That help would depend on “very fundamental changes in the way the government of Zimbabwe conducts itself and the policies it implements,” he said.

There was no immediate response from the government on Dell’s remarks.

In the past, Mugabe has frequently accused Western ambassadors of meddling in the nation’s internal affairs and denied the country cannot manage its own homegrown recovery programs.

In November, Dell was summoned to the foreign ministry in Harare after making equally outspoken criticisms of Zimbabwe’s policies that he said plunged the nation into poverty. The envoy was warned he could be expelled from Harare.

Zimbabwe’s economy has been in a free fall since Mugabe’s government began seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks in 2000.

More than 3,000 people a week die of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, while U.N. agencies estimate that about 4 million people are in need of food.

Last year, some 700,000 people lost their homes or livelihoods in the government’s May-September “Operation Murambatsvina” — or “drive out filth” — an often violent demolition campaign aimed at street vendors, market stall holders and allegedly illegal housing.

(Associated Press)