Once it was Africa's shining city on a hill, a beacon of prosperity and economic growth in the gloom of a continent shrouded by poverty. Emerging in 1980 from a seven-year civil war against white settler rule, the newly independent nation of Zimbabwe embraced racial reconciliation and invited the country's whites (one in 20 of the population) to remain and contribute to the new nation. Fast forward to today, and the country is unrecognizable.
Zimbabwe now has the fastest-shrinking peacetime economy in the world. This week, one U.S. dollar (even in its newly enfeebled state) will fetch you 55 million Zimbabwe dollars on the street. Hyperinflation there has soared well above 100,000% -- way past what it was in the Weimar Republic, when Germans loaded up wheelbarrows with money to go grocery shopping. Zimbabweans must carry huge wads of cash around in shopping bags, and by the time they reach the checkout desk at the shortage-racked supermarkets, the prices have already gone up.
Commercial agriculture -- the backbone of the economy -- lies shattered. All but a few of the country's 5,000 large-scale farmers, most of whom were white, have been run off their properties by government-backed squatters and militia. From being a food exporter, Zimbabwe would now starve without U.N. famine relief. And even with it, half the population is malnourished. Education and healthcare have collapsed. Ravaged by AIDS, life expectancy has plummeted from around 60 years old to about 35, the world's lowest. Zimbabwe has more orphans per capita than almost any other country on the planet. Water is undrinkable, power infrequent, roads potholed, fuel scarce, corruption endemic.