The great exodus of Zimbabweans

Presenter: Lindsay Williams
Guest(s): Allister Sparks Official Zimbabwe inflation is 4,500% but retailers are saying it’s probably closer to 11,000% and the US ambassador says it may be heading rapidly towards 1,500,000%. Classic Business Day gets political analyst Allister Sparks on the line LINDSAY WILLIAMS: The online UK Guardian newspaper published an extraordinary story where US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell is attributed with saying Zimbabwe’s inflation rate will rocket to 1,500,000% before the end of 2007 and that he was forecasting massive disruption and instability that would drive current Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe from office. Allister, whether that’s11,000% or 1,000,000% inflation Robert Mugabe has survived up until now - is there any suggestion that even with hyperinflation that anything might change? ALLISTER SPARKS: Inflation does gallop away - and it seems to have reached that point in Zimbabwe now. I was checking a little earlier today in a comparison with the Weimar Republic in the 1920s - at the beginning of 1923 their inflation rate was running at 10,000% and by September of that same year it was 1,000,000,000% so there is a tendency for it to gallop away. But Mugabe is a great survivor, and we must beware when making predictions of his imminent departure that he and his closest colleagues have stashed money abroad -and that could enable them to survive. That “hermetically seals” them from the worst impact of inflation, and that would presumably include military commanders, and the other key people that keep Mugabe in power. Of course out in the countryside at least some of the peasants can revert to a kind of subsistence economy - but somewhere between three and four million people have left the country, which is between a third and a quarter of the population. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: So those that are left are the fat cats and the Mugabe cronies with money in Switzerland and elsewhere, and they don’t really care whether inflation exists or not - and there’s the peasants that can grow food for themselves, and subsist. On the other hand apart from those two sectors of the population we have to consider the countries that surround Zimbabwe and the effect on those countries - what might that effect be? ALLISTER SPARKS: I think there really is a considerable demographic impact on a country like Botswana - they don’t have a very large population as it is, so the influx of around 750,000 people there really does make an impact. Speaking to a businessman from Francistown the other day he told me that in his judgement 80% of the population of that town in northern Botswana now consists of Zimbabwean refugees, and that’s a tremendous burden on that country. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: Yes, it becomes a tremendous burden on everybody. South Africa of course is also a recipient of Zimbabwean refugees… ALLISTER SPARKS: Yes, and I think it’s particularly bad in Limpopo province where increasing numbers are streaming in all the time. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: Yes, I was in the Limpopo Province quite recently - the Limpopo River is just a wide expanse of sand, and when I was there I saw people literally risking their lives to get across that crocodile infested area and it was quite desperate to watch. What’s also quite desperate is the black market rate for the Zimbabwe dollar - the Business Day website says it’s between Z$170,000 and Z$200,000 to the US dollar, and the Guardian says it’s up to Z$400,000 for one US$1. At some stage doesn’t the Zimbabwe economy shut completely down? ALLISTER SPARKS: I don’t know. Companies go broke and vanish but countries don’t - they simply support fewer and fewer of their own people. It’s accelerating at a tremendous rate - I go up there quite frequently, and prices change within the day. Prices can change two or three times in the day in the retail stores, and this means you can't use credit cards or cheques or anything like that. One has to cart around large quantities of money, and it really just becomes more and more difficult for ordinary folk to cope. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: The US ambassador said: “Prices are going up twice a day, and in some cases are doubling several times a week which destabilises everything. People have completely lost faith in the currency, and that means they have lost faith in the government that issues it”. You don’t think this is the last hurrah for Mugabe? ALLISTER SPARKS: He can't go on surviving. There’s a new initiative being led by President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) that started last weekend with talks in Pretoria which has been very slow to get underway - the whole process is moving at a glacial pace, so one imagines the situation is worsening faster than that - but if that can succeed in producing even a reasonably free and fair election then Mugabe is a goner. There’s no way he can survive - unless he has a thoroughly rigged election. The problem of course even as we speak is that his police and intelligence services are arresting, detaining, and brutally beating up all kinds of opposition political figures - they’re trying to smash the infrastructure of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), student protestors are being badly beaten up, and quite a number have died. So if Mbeki is serious about helping negotiate a free and fair election he really ought to take note of what’s happening right now - because this is designed to disrupt the organisational structure of the opposition parties and disable them well ahead of the election. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: What do you make of the reports that Pretoria has recently hosted the political opponents from Zimbabwe in the last week or so? Is there any truth in that? ALLISTER SPARKS: Yes, that’s certainly the case. They were supposed to meet about three weeks ago, but the Zanu PF team didn’t pitch up. This produced an angry letter from President Mbeki, and then this last weekend they did arrive - but it’s taken them more than two months simply to produce an agenda, meanwhile the beatings continue. So it’s a very slow process - and clearly their hyperinflation is running faster than that. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: Dell is coming to the end of his tenure in Harare after quite a tumultuous period as US ambassador - what do you make of the fellow? ALLISTER SPARKS: I think he’s been pretty good, and much better than most of his predecessors and even his contemporaries. He has been very outspoken - he has enraged Robert Mugabe on a number of occasions - but he has managed to get some pretty striking information, and get it published abroad to really alert the world to what a grave situation has arisen there, and how rapidly it’s worsening. I think he’s been one of the best ambassadors of any country who has been there through this drawn out period. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: What’s the best way that Mbeki and the rest can save face? Do they say to Mugabe and his cronies they’ve got the money out now so go quietly and let’s get this country back on track? Do they allow the political process to take its course - in other words a free and fair election? ALLISTER SPARKS: What I think is important is that Mugabe has been able to bluff a lot of his own people and a lot of the rest of Africa by perennially stating that the crisis in Zimbabwe is the fault of sanctions. That’s false. He has also been saying that it’s only the West that’s criticising him - that all of Africa is solidly behind him because he has taken land from whites and given it to black folk. It’s all untrue - and that untruth ought to be exposed and made evident to the Zimbabweans themselves. I believe that what President Mbeki ought to do is to give fair warning to President Mugabe right now that unless the beatings stop and unless progress is accelerated then the Sadc unit as a whole will declare the election null and void, not free, not fair, and not recognisable. I think that would frighten - that would really alarm Mugabe. I think that’s the only thing he really fears. LINDSAY WILLIAMS: Do you think there’s any chance of that happening given the fact that the beatings have been going on for years? ALLISTER SPARKS: It ought to happen. I’m afraid I doubt whether it will…