Earlier this week, Robert Mugabe announced that it would be “a wasted vote” for Zimbabweans to cast their ballots for anyone but him when they go to the polls this Saturday, March 29th. “It will never happen for Tsvangirai to take over government here—never,” the 84-year-old said of his chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. This wasn’t mere boisterous optimism; it was a military threat.

Zimbabwe’s army chief, its chief of prisons, and the commissioner general of the police had previously declared their refusal to take orders from anyone but Mugabe, regardless of who wins the election. The old man hardly even needs to rig the ballot.

In honor of the Zimbabwean leadership’s tenacious dedication to political inertia, here are…

Ten Reasons For Replacing Democracy With A President For Life:

1. Kenya’s 2007 election.

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(See Arno Kopecky’s first post about Zimbabwe.)

As Ralph drove me to his rose farm in Enterprise Valley, some thirty kilometres outside Harare, he explained how anyone with access to foreign currency and local credit can become a Rockefeller in the new Zimbabwe.

“I bought my farm in 2000 for the equivalent of $150,000 US dollars,” he said. “Paid for it in Zimbabwean currency, of course. Borrowed the whole lot from a local bank.” The bank charged thirty percent interest on the loan, which would be a lot if inflation weren’t outpacing it by several thousand percent. A year and a half later, Ralph’s debt had shrunk to the equivalent of USD$18,000 and he paid it off with the proceeds from a single truckload of flowers. (more…)

With even Kenyans starting to lose interest in the Kenyan saga, Zimbabwe looks set to become the next African media darling. This time around, though, coverage will be more spotty; president Robert Mugabe has banned reporters from ‘hostile’ Western countries—meaning all Western countries—from entering the country in advance of the March 29th election.

It won’t be easy for TV crews to get inside, and for those who do it will be even harder to operate. But writers (like the Globe and Mail’s Michael Valpy, who recently paid Harare a surreptitious visit) should still be able to slip in on a tourist visa. I’m going to pass this time around. But Valpy’s dispatch reminded me of my own trip to Mugabe-land four months ago, when the biggest bill in circulation was the $200,000 (Zimbabwean) note. One American dollar fetched 900,000 zimbucks at the time, a figure which was approaching 1.5 million when I left two weeks later. By the time Valpy rolled in, the exchange rate was at 25 million and the government was printing 2-million-dollar bills. Welcome to hyperinflation.

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BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE—I met Max Mkhandla in the sitting room of Radio Dialogue’s ninth floor offices in the southern city of Bulawayo. He wore an olive green jumpsuit and looked mildly contemptuous of all the soft couches. His fierce eyes squinted from between a shaved crown and a compact beard that jutted horizontally out from his chin and served to emphasize the thrust of his words. Max was to be my guide for a tour of the arid countryside surrounding Bulawayo. Here, in the province of Matebeleland, the effects of what Mugabe refers to as Zimbabwe’s “third chimurenga” — independence struggle — were said to be the most acute in the country. Max knew the region well, having covered it on foot as a teenage guerrilla during the second chimurenga of the 1970’s, when people still fought with guns. Then, the battle lines had been clear: black rebels versus the white soldiers of apartheid Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then known. Things are murkier now. Not only have dollar bills replaced bullets, but skin color is no longer a reliable determinant of friend and foe.

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Mount Pleasant, Harare—Innocent Matshe is the chairman of the Economics department at the University of Zimbabwe. To him, I am Alex, a Canadian sociology student. Whether he believes this or not I don’t know, but he accepts my unannounced visit with relaxed good humour and ushers me into his office.

“In order to understand Zimbabwe’s current situation,” he says, “you need to know about three things.” (more…)