-----Original Message-----
From: African Youth Movement <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, July 21, 2000 1:10 PM
Subject: Fwd: Zimbabwe: A story of African success


|--- In [log in to unmask], Wicklow9@a... wrote:
|Harare, Zimbabwe. July 21, 2000
|
|
|Zimbabwe: A story of African success
|
|
|NOW that the furore over Zimbabwe's election has abated, let's draw a
|deep
|breath and admit it: Zimbabwe is an African good-news story.
|
|
|
|
|----------------------------------------------------------------------
|--------
|--
|
|JONATHAN STEELE reports
|
|
|
|----------------------------------------------------------------------
|--------
|--
|A
|
|
|At about 90% the country has one of the highest literacy rates on the
|continent. Its race relations are excellent. The attempt to fan black
|hostility against white farmers during the election campaign was a
|failure.
|The political tension that once divided the country's two main ethnic
|groups,
|the Shona and the Ndebele, has almost disappeared. Zimbabwe's civil
|society
|is vibrant. A plethora of civic groups deal with issues from gender
|equality
|and human rights to job creation and poverty reduction.
|Zimbabwe's judiciary is as firm and unbowed as it was during the
|colonial
|era. There are powerful trade unions and, though the ruling party
|maintains
|iron control over broadcasting and rejects licences for independent
|radio
|stations, there is a thriving independent press.
|The elections have given the country a two-party system with a strong
|opposition for the first time in its history. Zanu-PF's terminology
|may have
|an antiquated feel with its politburo, central committee and
|comrades, but a
|series of government ministers and officials are welcoming the
|arrival of
|pluralism.
|
|
|
|Nathan Shamuyarira, Zanu-PF's secretary for information, expects it
|to
|"produce lively debates in Parliament". This change of official tone
|has
|already had an effect on the state-owned media with unprecedented
|space
|suddenly being given to opposition views and criti-cism of the
|government.
|
|Few other African states can rival Zimbabwe's natural advantages. It
|has a
|tourist potential that is bound to revive as the election images of
|intimidation fade. The dams are full and the country is not going to
|starve.
|
|Still, there is a downside. Zimbabwe faces three serious problems,
|and only
|one can plausibly be blamed on President Robert Mugabe. It is
|suffering from
|the Aids crisis more than almost every other country in Africa. About
|a
|quarter of the adult population, both rural and urban, is infected,
|and 1 000
|people are dying every week.
|
|One key reason for Zimbabwe's vulnerability is the colonial system
|with its
|preference for migrant African labour. One of the last great crimes
|of the
|racist Ian Smith regime is the town of Chitungwiza, built 30km from
|Harare to
|keep the workforce well away from the European suburbs. The huge
|number of
|men forced to live on their own produces a sex industry and a climate
|ripe
|for Aids.
|
|Controlling the disease is not helped by Zimbabwe's second strategic
|problem.
|It is an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, where women still curtsy
|to men.
|HIV-positive men go home to their villages and soon infect their
|wives. Only
|a massive expansion of sex education in schools and a shift in gender
|relations will have an effect.
|
|The third difficulty is the weakness of the economy in the face of
|global
|tendencies, including the ideological havoc caused by the first wave
|of
|neo-liberal thinking in the 1990s. Zimbabwe began life as an
|independent
|state a decade earlier. The massive spending on health and education
|in the
|1980s resulted in a high budget deficit, which was not helped by
|lower-than-expected foreign investment and poor prices for export
|commodities. This was not a case of government mismanagement but of
|adverse
|factors beyond its control.
|
|In 1991 the government accepted an International Monetary Fund (IMF)
|structural adjustment programme that devalued the Zimbabwean dollar,
|opened
|the way to more imports, and cut the government deficit by charging
|for
|welfare services, including schools and medicine. The infant
|mortality rate
|in Harare shot up.
|
|The economy's liberalisation did not attract the investment the IMF
|predicted. In the mid-1990s, the IMF and World Bank shifted their
|emphasis to
|poverty reduction and sustainability. But in Zimbabwe the damage was
|done and
|the Zanu-PF government reacted with a volatile love-hate approach to
|the
|international financial institutions.
|
|The crisis over white-owned land is the climax of these frustrations.
|But, as
|many Zimbabwean NGO experts on land reform point out, the
|government's plans
|are dominated by statist thinking. Therein lies Zimbabwe's current
|tragedy.
|
|It is run by a generation of elderly men who have not been able to
|move on
|from the liberation struggle. Challenged for power, they fall back on
|a
|single issue, and increasingly on racism. The intimidation in the
|latest
|elections was the reflex defence of people threatened by loss of
|power and
|too inflexible to find ways of achieving consent through dialogue and
|compromise.
|
|But Zimbabwe is in transition to a new generation, a new style of
|government,
|and perhaps to a president from a new party. Coupled with its many
|inherent
|advantages, this is a story of African success.
|
|
|
|-- The Mail&Guardian, July 21, 2000.
|--- End forwarded message ---
|
|

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:

        http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html

AAM Website:  http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------