- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Zimbabwe

In Reply to: Zimbabwe posted by Nikhil Jaikumar on December 04, 1999 at 17:36:21:

I agree with many of your sentiments regarding Zimbabwe but I have trouble with the idea that the country is a socialist success story.
Once again we see a country hijacked by its revolutionary leaders and allowed to stagnate and rot. While Mugabe et al award themselves huge pay rises and cut themselves off from the rest of the world (he recently denounced the entire British cabinet as homosexuals), the state is falling apart. Poverty is still crippling after 20 years of ZANU-PF rule while drought and AIDS tear society apart.Life for the majority of Zimbabweans is probably no worse than before the revolution but it is certainly no better.
More than anything this is very sad. My parents were teachers there just after the revolution while the country was rebuilding and the sense of optimism in the community was almost palpable. Last year my brother went back for a visit. While he was there he picked up a hitch-hiker who turned out to be a policeman on the way to a crime scene. An ambulance took an hour to arrive at an accident which happened in the centre of the capital city.

I think that this is simply proof that leaders of revolutionary armies have no idea how to run a country. If Mugabe and his cronies could be gotten rid of and land were distributed fairly (the whites still own the best stuff) then the future would look a lot better. The problem isn't with socialism, it's the people who end up running it.
To declare Zimbabwe a success is, sadly, clutching at straws.

Follow Ups:

• Zimbabwe has fallen far short of the socialist potential that it had in 1980. Nikhil Jaikumar DSA MA, USA December 06 1999 (0)