spero News: Dzikamai Chidyausku writes of the grim prospects for Christmas in Zimbabwe
There will be no real Christmas in Zimbabwe. Yes, December 25 will come and go in this largely Christian country. But there won’t be the kind of merry Christmas that Zimbabweans recall from earlier times, even in the pre-independence years of white minority rule. This Christmas, even though it comes at the height of summer will be bleak indeed.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
blonde 12.19.05 at 11:42 pm
It’s grim and scary, but so many people here are unaware the situation is still so bad since it’s less in the news recently. One of our housegroup is Zimbabwean, and going home after Christmas for a month. Thoughts and prayers for that benighted place!
dh 12.19.05 at 11:46 pm
I will continue to pray for Zimbabwe. It seems to me the economy is paying for what they did to lanowners. Anytime the government gets involved in “economic redistribution” the economy is going to be hurt due to government inefficiencies. Oh well, that is my education talking (being an MBA myself).
Steve 12.20.05 at 2:43 am
Zimbabwe appears to have larger issues than simply the redistribution of the land - although certainly Mugabe has made the situation go from awful to horrific. The fact is, unemployment was 70 percent BEFORE he did that (90 percent now). Certainly bad government plays a key role in this crisis, but the entire world economic system which allows the poor to be swept completely under the rug so that the wealthy nations don’t have to dent their prodigious GDPs to help out is significantly to blame as well.
Another tragic example of our out-of-wack global economic system is Malawi. Thousands are starving there, but a few hundred miles away, South Africa sits on top of a bumper crop. But because Malawians are the poorest of the poor, they cannot afford the South African food. And too few nations appear to be helping. So they starve.
dh 12.20.05 at 3:27 pm
I’m glad you and I are in agreement with Mugabe. My feeling is that without Mugabe and having a president who has proper economics and promotes business so that people can have a job that the original 70% figure would have went down. I feel the situations proves that economic redistribution in any grand form does not work for the maximum benefit of the people.
dh 12.20.05 at 3:29 pm
Somehow people forget that people aren’t going to have jobs unless business is there to provide the jobs. That takes government to help promote this for further gain to the people and the country.