Point of Interest: Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Sunset by babasteve, uploaded on flickr

It seems that a staple of Democracy is not exactly being allowed to happen correctly. It started with Kenyan elections late last year that ended with 3 months of civil unrest, thousands dead, and even more homeless. But I want to talk about Zimbabwe. This African nation first caught my attention when I learned their inflation rate is over 4,000%!!! How bad is it? Toilet paper is over $500...per two ply sheet. Meaning on role of toilet paper cost over $150,000! It is absolutely unreal.

What causes this situation to happen? Well the short answer is a dangerously low amount of supplies and uncontrolled government spending. Which brings us to Zimbabwe's fearless leader of twenty eight years, Robert G. Mugabe. Mugabe in a nutshell: Came to power in 1980. Helped out in the second Congo war and screwed his country over. He kicked all the White farmers off the land and his opinion in the West shrank. Now his country is in the midst of one of the worst economic crisis's in the history of modern time. Yet he continues to spend money like his government has a surplus. He has been relatively unchallenged for the past 28 years. But when a roll toilet paper cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, it's pretty easy to find people who are willing to run. Or should I say brave to stand up to Mugabe.

March 29th saw Zimbabwe elections that was actually close. See the thing is though, the government hasn't announced a winner. Two weeks later and still no results. Mugabe's camp is calling for a run off. The opposition party is claiming victory. Zimbabwe's election commission says the election would have been extremely hard to rig. Yesterday the voting commission said that their were irregularities and that a recount may be needed. This situation could explode into civil war very shortly if the results don't come out. The real results I should say.

Fin.