Time Immortal

Not that that’s exactly news, of course — since he steered the economy of Zimbabwe into the ground and begain a racist program of driving white farmers off of their land, Robert Mugabe has earned himself a laundry-list of detractors and opponents around the world.

But Queen Elizabeth II seems to be especially displeased:

The Associated Press LONDON - The Queen has stripped Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe of his honorary knighthood.

The highly unusual move is meant to show Britain’s displeasure over alleged human rights abuses by Mugabe’s administration. The Queen acted Wednesday on the advice of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Miliband says Mugabe should have the honour revoked because of widespread violence and intimidation of Zimbabwe’s opposition ahead of a presidential run-off vote scheduled for Friday.

I suppose one could ask the question of why this was not done sooner, but perhaps it can be taken as a signal that the British government has more or less given up hope on the Mugabe regime, whereas before they had been attempting to effect change in the nation by working with him. But since he appears to have stolen yet another election in order to retain power, perhaps now the British Foreign Office are throwing up their hands and saying “to hell with ‘im.”

(The Queen, though she has the power to revoke the knighthood of anybody without having to consult the government (at least as far as I understand the process), typically won’t make such an overtly political statement, or undertake such an overtly political action, absent the behest of the British government.)

Regardless, it’s a welcome development. One can only coddle dictators for so long — after a while, only de-legitimizing them, both in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of their people, will work against them, either to force them out of power or to force them to change their policies. The British know as much, for this was how — by way of Poland — Margaret Thatcher (along with the U.S. and especially the Pope) approached the issue of breaking up the Soviet Union.

A loaf of bread in Zimbabwe now costs $50,000.
Zimbabwe used to be the “bread basket of Africa“, one of the wealthier post-colonial nations responsible for a solid majority of African agricultural production. With the declaration of independence from Britain, and the coming to power of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in 1980, however, things began to go south for this once strong nation.

A drought in 1992 was severe enough to warrant the declaration of a national disaster, but while this was severe, it is ultimately not what led to the hyperinflation and widespread poverty that now grips Zimbabwe. That took Mugabe’s government — and systemic Racism — to make happen. It began with the land redistribution policies that the ZANU-PF put in place to transfer arable land from white farmers to black farmers. At the time, white farmers comprised less than 1% of the population, but held about 70% of the arable land. Which sounds like a lot, but when you consider that an individual farmer might own a fair stretch of land, it really wasn’t. It simply means that most of the farms in Zimbabwe were run by white people, and were run well.

The forced removal from their land of these farmers meant that newer, black farmers were inheriting possession of the lands left vacant…which led, in turn, to disaster. The incoming tenants of these farms were not necessarily gifted farmers themselves, and indeed many weren’t anything more than local thugs who felt that the policy gave them an entitlement to claim some “white land” for themselves. The fact that they had to use the land — effectively — to grow crops seems never to have occurred to any of them.

This led to a rise in price of agricultural products, and ultimately plunged a nation that had once been a net exporter of foodstuffs into a famine. What is worse, Mugabe has held on to power in every election since 1980 through extensive use of vote-rigging and anti-opposition crackdowns and arrests. Additionally, the International Monetary Fund has suspended monetary aid to Zimbabwe for “failure to meet budgetary goals”: polite diplo-speak for “Mugabe and his cronies kept it all”, I suspect.

About the only positive outcome from this crisis has been the literacy rate in Zimbabwe, which sits at about 90.2% (higher than many “developed” countries). There is some hope there…for if and when Mugabe loses power (or dies), there is a chance that the nation could bounce back to its former prominence — the level of education in the populace suggests that they could put forth an effective government that could turn this whole landslide around. But until such a day as when that is possible, Zimbabwe will struggle under the most crippling debt and inflation, because of the kleptocratic and racist policies of its government. And funnelling more money into that nation will not solve the problem: it will only enable Mugabe and his various hangers-on to buy more exotic cars, and exotic vacations.

Regime change is the solution that would work, but it’s also the road nobody wants to discuss. And yet, sometimes, sending in the troops is indeed the best option.

Hat tip to Kate for the BBC link.