Joey Sawyer April 8th Five thirty pm
my birthday!!
Zimbabwe: Yesterday: NY times
Mugabe has recently lost a popular election. Mugabe is a well known tyrannical leader in Zimbabwe. He is responsible for many human rights violations and utterly destroying the economy in his country. The zimbabwean dollar is essentially worthless, and it is in large part due to his redistribution of land from various farmer to people he wants to be in power, buying political allies.
Zimbabwe has had a history of food production as an industry, but the industry is failing simply because only a select few chosen by Mugabe himself reap the rewards of 80 percent of the land. This has lead to a third of the population being in need of food sent to them by helping friendly international organizations. 80% of the population is unemployed. The economy has collapsed because he took it away from the people and given it to his friends. His friends have much interest in keeping him in power, because they apparantly, as a whole don't give a crap that most of the country is starving. Hopefully things will change on their own, because until we discover a resource we can exploit chances are we won't help them. Maybe the UN will, but most of what they do is trying to make elections fair. That is a toughy with such a militant leader. If things get back on the right track with a new leader in Zimbabwe and their agricultural economy picks back up they may be a future force in the future helping neighboring countries fight famine as well. Perhaps I am too optomistic. At least they can feed their own if the power elite is disbanded.
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