By Staff
I studied African politics for my political science minor in college about the time white Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe.
We heard as guest lecturer South African Alan Paton, author of "Cry, The Beloved Country." He died in 1988.
With all its natural resources, from a gold-mining region to the tourist-tempting Victoria Falls and wildlife such as lions and hippos, nobody foresaw prosperous Zimbabwe being reduced to misery by Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe's ruinous policies imploded this promising African nation into one of the poorest and most repressive countries on the globe.
In the 1980s, Zimbabwe enjoyed the second largest economy in southern Africa. It afforded the best education and health care on the continent.
Today, nobody is even sure of the population. Eleven million? Thirteen million? It's hard to count with everyone heading for the red hills, risking crocodiles in the Limpopo River and lions in South Africa's Kruger National Park as they fled, led by intelligent people, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers.
Mugabe has steadily become single-minded in clinging to power at all costs, devastating his economy and presiding over a police state.
Unemployment is at 80 percent. Living standards are said to be at 1953 levels.
The World Health Organization says life expectancy is 34 for women and 37 for men – lowest in the world.
Inflation hit 1,792.9 percent in February and is projected to reach 3,700 percent by the end of 2007.
What this means, I read, is that one brick costs more than a three-bedroom house with a swimming pool did in 1990.
Traffic is no longer a common sight on roads. Telephones don't work. Power is out. Factory stacks spew no smoke.
You don't hear much about it because foreign journalists are routinely refused permission to venture there.
Like Castro in Cuba or Saddam in Iraq, "Comrade" Mugabe's photo looks down on the whole mess through his gold glasses in framed photographs in every bare-shelved store, gas station, hotel reception area and government office.
He commands the front page of every newspaper to rail about the West plotting "monkey business" against his country.
In an interview on his 83rd birthday, Mugabe said, "Some people say I am a dictator. My own people say I am handsome."
So he's delusional, too, cooped up in his 25-bedroom villa in the capital Harare with Italian-marble bathrooms and roof tiles from Shanghai.
Since 2000, Mugabe has encouraged mobs to invade farms owned by the remaining tens of thousands of white residents, who back his opposition.
He stokes the paranoia that Britain and the United States are bent on recolonizing Zimbabwe. He wants people to fear him more than hate him, and hate themselves most of all.
The ruling party, Zanu-PF, has already endorsed him as its candidate for the 2008 presidential election.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "The Tigers are the best team in our division."
– Kansas City Royals Manager Buddy Bell, former Detroit skipper
"The NFL draft is more boring than Amish porn. There's no ball, no game, no score. Basically, they will sit there for hours while virtually nothing happens. Isn't that what soccer's for? Even worse, there are thousands of fans at Ford Field in Detroit waiting to see who the Lions draft. And then it hits me: I'm sitting on my butt in Denver watching people in Detroit sit on their butts watching people in New York sit on their butts. We are at gluteus maximus."
– Rick Reilly
in Sports Illustrated