Robert Mugabe has stepped in to try to staunch the bleeding in the Zim economy. But like just about everything he does when it comes to his country, his methods are dubious. This time around he is taking a strong stand in intervening in the economy, which includes increased nationalization of industries and the expansion of price controls in order to address the seemingly inexorable upward march of inflation, which some reports are placing at a nearly unfathomable 10,000%. The Mail & Guardian calls Mugabe's gambit “risky,” as if up to now Mugabe has been a model of temperance and caution. (On a vaguely related note, perhaps, there appear to be irregularities in Zimbabwe's voter registration process for next year's elections.)
Since the crackdown there has been a run on store stocks and shelves are empty. The Mugabe government has promised that it will come down hard on any businesses that defy the mandated cutting of costs. Some of Mugabe's critics in the West will use this as an example of Mugabe's not-so latent communism, but this really has nothing to do wioth ideology and everything to do with the exercise of power. Mugabe foreswore Marxism when it suited him and he embraces it when it does not. His willingness partially to nationalize the economy is not the excercise of a committed communist; it is the act of a ruthless tyrant, and though most often historically the distinction between the two has been inconsequential, in this case, the two are not the same thing.
The ramifications of Zimbabwe's collapse go well beyond the country's borders. The effects even transcend the immediate southern African region. A recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicates that Zimbabwe is having a negative impact on the entire continent's economic growth — numbers that otherwise might represent a slice of positive news for much of Africa — and that the laissez faire approach of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the continent's leaders is only exacerbating the situation.
