How-to guide to saving Zimbabwe!

I'm no political analyst, so my views are to be treated as exactly that, my views!

This past weekend saw elections in Zim go off with little violence. Naturally, there was the classic "I will not cheat!" speech from Mugabe, and then hours later, he banned the Electoral Commission from releasing results until it passes through his offices. No Bob, it doesn't smell fishy! ;)

Anyway, I've come up with a few things that need to be corrected in order for Zimbabwe to get things on the right track.

Facts:

• Zimbabwe suffers from a major hyperinflation problem, due to the fact that the Reserve Bank keeps churning out trillions of newly printed dollars whenever the government has a bill to pay. This has led to a major devaluation of the currency and thus the plummet of the economy.
• A law was passed a few years ago stating that 51% of all mining shares are to be reclaimed by the government, thus hugely impacting on mining and other related industries, which ended up with most of them closing shop, adding to the huge unemployment issue and kick the economy in the proverbial balls.
• There was the much publicised land ownership issue where Mugabe reclaimed farms and distributed it randomly to uneducated, untrained and unmanaged war veterans, which saw a major drop in the nations produce as well lost quite a few international friends.
• In 1999 he lost a US$193million from the IMF because he failed to meet basic conditions of the financing.
• He unleashed violence against supporters and members of his political competition, which resulted in tourists being scared away, which led to the collapse of the tourism industry.

As an example of how bad it is, The US suffered a loss of 30% of its GNP during the depression, Zimbabwe is currently 40% lower that its GNP values for the year 2000.
As a further example of the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe, 8yrs ago Z$14mil could buy you a mansion in a posh suburb in Harare, 3 weeks ago Z$14mil bought you a can of coke. By yesterday, the 31st of March 2008, a can of coke cost Z$56mil.



The biggest question that comes out of this elections, is "How do we fix this mess now?"

Humbly, I suggest

Step 1: Shut down those printers at the Reserve Bank. Printing more money is only devaluing the currency and adding to laughing inflation rates. This of course leaves Zim with the problem of who will pick up the bills... Simple, in 1999 Mugabe signed a deal with the IMF for funding as long as Zim kept their end of the bargain, this deal is still valid as long as the new leadership manages to fulfill the requirements. (I might be wrong, but I think that the deal breaker was that Zimbabwe was spending more money on its military than on health care and the IMF asked them to change this.)

Step 2: Give back ownership of the mines and hope that the mining companies do come back to open shop again.

Step 3: Return the reclaimed farms to the legal Title Deed holders, and encourage the employment of the new land dwellers by the farmers, perhaps by providing farming subsidies to these farms.

Step 4: Get a new currency! C'mon, no respects a Zim Dollar anymore and it will be cheaper to convert all of the existing currency into toilet paper than try to save the existing currency.

Step 5: Job creation and solving the unemployment issue. This can be helped by step 2, but the problem is more deep rooted than that. Honestly, I have no suggestions how to solve this.

Step 6: Stop the violence and go back into being the peaceful Southern Africa neighbour that you used to be, and watch the tourism industry find its feet again!

The problems are of course deeper rooted into a policy level, and hopefully with the right assistance from major world organisations and leaders, Zimbabwe will find its way back to being a respectable nation!

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