Mugabe's ruinous scheme
Robert Mugabe seems determined that the nation he leads, Zimbabwe, will die a slow-motion death.
After running the once-prosperous African nation's economy into the ground, Mugabe has decided to put the finishing touches on its ruin with a loopy scheme to nationalize all farmland. Private ownership of land will be abolished.
A scheme to confiscate land from white commercial farmers, who accounted for most of Zimbabwe's agricultural exports, has now expanded to confiscate land from everybody. That should make a bad situation worse, much worse. Once a food exporter, Zimbabwe now grows only half the food it needs. Now it is unlikely to grow even that.
Thanks to Mugabe's dictatorial mismanagement and goofy socialist schemes, Zimbabwe's once-vital mining and manufacturing sectors are moribund, unemployment is rampant, foreign investment and aid nil and its currency virtually worthless.
In confiscating white-owned land, Mugabe turned over the best of it to his cronies, who have proved incapable of farming it, and the rest to small farmers who are unable to farm it because they cannot afford to buy seed, fertilizer, fuel and farm machinery. And without clear title to their land, they are unable to borrow.
The latest scheme, which envisions no compensation for land nationalized, calls for the farmers to be issued 99-year leases, which the government feels will be collateral enough for lenders. This dismissal of the rights of private property ensures that Zimbabwe's entrepreneurs will be unable to raise capital.
But even if lenders trusted the Mugabe government, which they don't, "The banks aren't going to lend to an individual against a lease that belongs to the state," a local economist told the Associated Press. "It doesn't work that way. You can't borrow on the strength of something you don't own."
The Mugabe government's explanation for the economic disaster is a plot by the white nations to restore colonialism. That argument was bogus when it was first made and is laughable now. If anything, Mugabe has probably made colonialism seem a desirable alternative to his people.
There are precedents for land-nationalization schemes like Mugabe's. In 1932-33, the Soviet Union forcibly collectivized its agricultural sector; 7 million died from starvation in Ukraine alone. From 1958-62, China's farmers were forced into the Great Leap Forward that left an estimated 30 million dead from starvation.
Sadly, something like that may be the fate of Zimbabwe if lunacy persists.
- The Cincinnati Post
Robert Mugabe seems determined that the nation he leads, Zimbabwe, will die a slow-motion death.
After running the once-prosperous African nation's economy into the ground, Mugabe has decided to put the finishing touches on its ruin with a loopy scheme to nationalize all farmland. Private ownership of land will be abolished.
A scheme to confiscate land from white commercial farmers, who accounted for most of Zimbabwe's agricultural exports, has now expanded to confiscate land from everybody. That should make a bad situation worse, much worse. Once a food exporter, Zimbabwe now grows only half the food it needs. Now it is unlikely to grow even that.
Thanks to Mugabe's dictatorial mismanagement and goofy socialist schemes, Zimbabwe's once-vital mining and manufacturing sectors are moribund, unemployment is rampant, foreign investment and aid nil and its currency virtually worthless.
In confiscating white-owned land, Mugabe turned over the best of it to his cronies, who have proved incapable of farming it, and the rest to small farmers who are unable to farm it because they cannot afford to buy seed, fertilizer, fuel and farm machinery. And without clear title to their land, they are unable to borrow.
The latest scheme, which envisions no compensation for land nationalized, calls for the farmers to be issued 99-year leases, which the government feels will be collateral enough for lenders. This dismissal of the rights of private property ensures that Zimbabwe's entrepreneurs will be unable to raise capital.
But even if lenders trusted the Mugabe government, which they don't, "The banks aren't going to lend to an individual against a lease that belongs to the state," a local economist told the Associated Press. "It doesn't work that way. You can't borrow on the strength of something you don't own."
The Mugabe government's explanation for the economic disaster is a plot by the white nations to restore colonialism. That argument was bogus when it was first made and is laughable now. If anything, Mugabe has probably made colonialism seem a desirable alternative to his people.
There are precedents for land-nationalization schemes like Mugabe's. In 1932-33, the Soviet Union forcibly collectivized its agricultural sector; 7 million died from starvation in Ukraine alone. From 1958-62, China's farmers were forced into the Great Leap Forward that left an estimated 30 million dead from starvation.
Sadly, something like that may be the fate of Zimbabwe if lunacy persists.
- The Cincinnati Post
publicado por MP às 20:44
