One of the laziest and most complacent slogans is, If voting changed anything it would be illegal.
Norm writes: This piece assembles some of the indices of Zimbabwe's economic meltdown. A couple of highlights:
Average life expectancy dropped from 63 years in 1990 to 37.3 years in 2005, according to World Bank and U.N. figures.I'm no statistician, so please excuse me for any error in reasoning here (and correct it if need be), but Mugabe's government appears to have stolen an average of 25 years of life per person from the population of Zimbabwe - stolen them and thrown them away. This is now a country nearly half of whose people are malnourished. (Via Memeorandum.)
.....
The World Food Program says 83 percent of Zimbabweans live on less than $2 per day and that 45 percent of the population are malnourished.
3 comments:
The sadness I feel for the people of Zimbabwe is immense. Even though my contact with anyone from there has been minimal, their pain is all too real. Why can't anything be done? I hope some good comes out of this election, though I am not placing any bets.
For anyone wanting to know what is has been like to live through Mugabe's long, slow torture of his own people and about the risks taken by those who oppose him, I recommend When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin. Heartbreaking.
I met Peter at the Adelaide Festival and liked him very much.
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