[This is a message from the David Coltart Mailing List]
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Executive Summary
On March 29, 2008, Zimbabwe will hold presidential and parliamentary
elections. Few people believe that they will be free and fair or that
Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union– Patriotic Front
party will fail to return to office.
That is a tragedy, because Mugabe and his cronies are chiefly
responsible for an economic meltdown that has turned one of Africa’s most
prosperous countries into a country with one of the lowest life expectancies
in the world. Since 1994, the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has
fallen from 57 years to 34 years for women and from 54 years to 37 years
for men. Some 3,500 Zimbabweans die every week from the combined
effects of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and malnutrition. Half a million Zimbabweans
may have died already. There is no freedom of speech or assembly in
Zimbabwe, and the state has used violence to intimidate and murder its
opponents.
At the root of Zimbabwe’s problems is a corrupt political elite that
has, with considerable international support, behaved with utter impunity
for some two decades. This elite is determined to hang on to power no
matter what the consequences, lest it be held to account for the
genocide in Matabeleland in the early 1980s and the wholesale looting of
Zimbabwe that followed the mismanaged land reform in 2000.
When change comes to Zimbabwe, the nation will have to rediscover the
rule of law and the sanctity of persons and property. The public
discourse and the economy will have to be reopened. The new government will
have to embrace a more limited idea of government and rescind legislation
that makes the operation of the private sector next to impossible.
Moreover, the new government will have to find a way for the people of
Zimbabwe to heal the wounds caused by decades of political violence.
The full article, published by the Cato Institute, is available for
reading and downloading in pdf format from my website:
Link to post: http://davidcoltart.com/archive/2008/385
Link to .pdf:
http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/dpa5.pdf
