Mums Finance

Just spare a thought for the unfortunate millions of people living in Zimbabwe. While at the moment the US is experiencing their own financial woes with the United Kingdom looking on anxiously to see if the American situation will rub off, the problem with inflation in Zimbabwe is almost mind boggling.

In February the CPI showed the British inflation rate standing at 2.5 percent; the inflation rate in the US stood in February at 4.03 percent. However in Zimbabwe, under despot Robert Mugabe, the country holds an inflation rate of a staggering 200,000 percent!

A journalist visiting Harare recently placed one loaf of bread at US$50 and one sheet of toilet paper at US$6.00…not that the locals have any money at all to purchase these trivial things (trivial to us anyway). Mugabe has always used the tool of bribery as a weapon against the people there but with a currency that is effectively worthless, rather than use monetary inducements, Mugabe used food as a currency. Withholding the countries main staple of maize from the people he used this to reward his supporters and withheld it to punish and control both the population and his opposers. This is why Zimbabweans are starving to death.

The people had one choice: vote for Mugabe in the past or starve…either way millions in this country have starved to death or are in the process of. Mugabe stockpiles the maize and uses it for his own criminal means. And this, in a nation that was the richest and strongest of all the African economies just over thirty years ago.

Let’s hope that this weekend’s elections has put a final halt to what has been thirty years of a cruel and murderous dictatorship, one which saw the rest of the world’s so-called leaders effectively turn a blind eye to what has happened to a proud people and a once prosperous nation. And next time you buy a loaf of bread and get change from a £2 coin, spare a thought for the people of Zimbabwe.

I have chosen a picture of a beautiful, but malnourished, child to remind the world of the hope we must all hold for Zimbabwe. I have not included a picture of Robert Mugabe basically because I cannot bear the sight of the evil bastard.

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