Mugabe's Legacy

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11 Jun 2009 09:23 pm

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is scheduled to meet with Obama tomorrow. The Economist reports on the state of the country:

For ordinary Zimbabweans, life has begun to get a bit better ...Thanks to the government’s decision to give an allowance of $100 a month to all civil servants (including government ministers), schools and hospitals have started to reopen. Food is back on supermarket shelves—for those who can afford it. Potholes in Zimbabwe’s bumpy roads have begun to be filled in.

But otherwise things are much as they were.

Electricity still often cuts out, sometimes for days on end. An estimated 95% of the population is still without formal jobs. A cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 4,300 people, may have abated but the water and sanitation systems are as decrepit as ever. Meanwhile, HIV-AIDS continues to claim some 3,000 lives a week.

Yet, against all the odds, there is a new feeling of hope. Mr Mugabe’s secret police are still everywhere, but the fear has gone. People are willing to speak out more freely. Demonstrations and MDC rallies are no longer met with the same violence. Foreign investors are sniffing around. But neither they nor international donors will put big money back into Zimbabwe until they can be sure that property rights and the rule of law are being respected. That, plainly, could still take some time.

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