Africa’s inaction on Zimbabwe a sad chapter in history

Where is the voice of Africa when Zimbabwe, which President Robert Mugabe has turned into a pigsty, is falling and human misery painful and incomprehensible?

Where is the conscience of the continent when cholera is sweeping Zimbabweans to an early grave, with hundreds presumed dead?

Where else on earth have we seen a leader subdue his people, subject them to the life of a leech bled to fatten a heifer, as the rest of the world just watches? Zimbabwe is not Somalia or Afghanistan where other factors are at play. It is a home to some of the most peaceful members of the African household.

We revisit Zimbabwe’s woes not just because of the misery of life in the southern state but the picture of primitivity and ignominy she gives Africa as the sea of artificial poverty and factory of disease.

Many have warned Zimbabwe is a time bomb, and when it shall implode the world will be slandered and shamed. This week the soldiers left the barracks to loot shops.

Tension is high and the rope of patience could snap before the mid-December return to the negotiating table by the parties struggling to piece together a joint government. Mugabe still holds onto the choicest and most succulent parts of the kill he stole in a re-run in which he ran against himself. Here are the meltdown figures, which Mugabe readily blames on economic blockade by the West, as condensed by Reuters this week:

Inflation reached 231 million per cent a year in July. Economists think it is now much higher and say prices are doubling daily.

Gross Domestic Product has fallen every year since 2000, down 10.4 per cent in 2003 alone. Zimbabwe has the world’s fastest shrinking economy for a country not at war, according to the World Bank.

Falling life expectancy

An estimated 83 per cent of the population was living on below $2 a day by 2005. Since then, the situation has only worsened.

Unemployment is estimated at over 90 per cent. Well over three million Zimbabweans are thought to have fled, in search of work and food.

Average life expectancy fell from 63 years in 1990 to 40.9 years in 2005, according to UN figures.

The official death toll from a cholera epidemic since August is at least 565, with more than 12,500 infected.

The shop shelves are empty and the water taps were switched off in Harare this week, ostensibly to hold back the spread of cholera. Hospitals and schools are in paralysis. Electricity is almost non-existent. Reuters penned down its worst fear this week even as Mugabe continued with his belligerence and bellicose posture: "But as the weeks and months glide by there is hardly any Zimbabwe left to govern or unite."

The shame with Zimbabwe is that half of Africa has left it to its fate, and the other half has chosen the traditional approach — not to ‘meddle’ in the affairs of another state. In between are the middle-grounders who see it as a regional matter and so are better handled by the Southern African Development Community through its point man, former South African President Thambo Mbeki.

The world through the UN has condemned, but concentrated on humanitarian effort, even as it becomes clear its military presence gets inevitable by the day. The African Union is sitting on its laurels, praying it is a bad dream that would go away if we wish it away.

Africa has let down Zimbabwe and whichever way it goes, our inaction will haunt us for many years to come and will be a sad chapter in history.