Countries  you  wouldn’t  want  to  live  in.  (Part 1)

 

Every country I am writing about in this series is not to be construed as a reflection about the decent people who live in those countries.

 

Zimbabwe

 

This country is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. It was formally called Rhodesia until it unilaterally declared its independence from the UK in 1965. Its population in 2012 was 12.6 million.

 

After a campaign marked by intimidation from all political sides, mistrust from security forces and reports of full ballot boxes being found on the road, the Shona majority elected Robert Mugabe to head the first government as its prime minister on March 4, 1980. It was from then that the people in Zimbabwe suffered from this man’s dictatorship.  In 1987, the position of Prime Minister was abolished and Mugabe assumed the new office of executive President of Zimbabwe gaining additional powers in the process. He was re-elected in 1990 and 1996, and in 2002 amid claims of widespread vote-rigging and intimidation. Mugabe's term of office expired at the end of March 2008, but he was re-elected later in 2008 in another election marred by allegations of election fraud and intimidation.

 

A number of people have accused Mugabe of having a racist attitude towards white people. John Sentamu, a Uganda-born Archbishop of York in the United Kingdom, calls Mugabe “the worst kind of racist dictator for having targeted the whites for their apparent riches.”

 

When Zimbabwe gained independence, 46.5% of the country's arable land was owned by around 6,000 commercial farmers, and white farmers, who made up less than 1% of the population, owned 70% of the best farming land and had owned their land for many years before Zimbabwe got its independence.

 

His racist attitude towards the whites living in Zimbabwe brought about a particular decision on his part that brought enormous misery to that country. By the mid-1990s it is thought that around 70,000 white people remained in Zimbabwe. In spite of this small number, the white Zimbabwean minority maintained control of much of the economy through its investment in commercial farms, industry, and tourism. However, as an on-going program of land reforms (intended to alter the ethnic balance of land ownership) Mugabe had pressed for the land to be transferred from white ownership to black ownership regardless of the resultant disruption to agricultural output, in order to correct the perceived injustice of the Rhodesian land apportionment. White farmers argued that this served little purpose since Zimbabwe had ample agricultural land much of which was either vacant or only lightly cultivated. Nevertheless, Mugabe transferred 5,000 white farms, covering 110,000 square kilometres (42,470 square miles) of mostly prime farmland, to black ownership of which some of the farms were given to his cronies who knew nothing about operating a farm. This transfer of white owned farms to the blacks was done without any compensation given to the whites for the loss of their farms. By mid-2006 only 500 of the original 5,000 white farms that were turned over to the blacks were still fully operational. As a result of this horrendous failure, there was a shortage of food products coming from the farms being available to the people of Zimbabwe.

 

As much as 60% of the people in Zimbabwe are currently unemployed and 78% of the people are considered extremely poor with an annual income of only $307 to live on.

 

The life expectancy for the people of Zimbabwe is 52 years for both men and women. This could be because as much as 14 percent of the population is living with HIV. Zimbabwe is experiencing one of the harshest HIV and AIDS epidemics in the world. Considering the large number of homeless and displaced people living in Zimbabwe who are not likely to have been surveyed, the results cannot be taken as wholly representative of the situation. A rise in the number of people dying from AIDS is thought to have played a role in the decline of the population having this disease as well as an increase in the number of people (HIV-positive or otherwise) who have migrated to other countries.

 

Mugabe who has been in power for the last 24 years is not popular and does anything it takes to stay in power. His political party controls the press so that his abuses he is imposing on the citizens who oppose him are not published.  His own people have no idea of what he is doing to them unless they witness the actions against his people or are directly or indirectly victims of the government wrongdoings in that country.  

 

Recently, rights groups said that the police in Zimbabwe have intensified a clampdown on civil society organizations and democracy campaigners ahead of a referendum on a new constitution and crucial elections to end the nation's shaky coalition government dominated by President Robert Mugabe's party.

When Zimbabweans voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new constitution earlier in March 2013, they approved a document that envisioned a new future for their country, scaling up human rights and dialing back presidential power. In the days immediately following the vote, police arrested a string of political leaders and human rights activists critical of President Robert Mugabe and his own political party.

 

The constitution paves way for elections later this year and will limit future presidents to just two five-year terms which is a far cry from the 33 years and counting that Mugabe has spent in power since Zimbabwe's transition to majority rule in 1980. The question that is on everyone’s mind in Zimbabwe is; will be step down at the next election clinging to power even if he loses the election?

 

In 2008 when Zimbabwe held an election, the mainstream MDC political party declared that its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won 50.3 percent of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8 percent according to the government’s tallies of results posted outside polling stations. Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe’s former information minister and an independent parliament member, said that the authorities were not coping with defeat and chiefs of security forces said they would not accept an opposition victory. Tsvangirai said, “You have generals who unwisely, or rather foolishly, told the world that they would only salute one candidate, who happened to have lost the election.” He was speaking of Mugabe of course. Well, as it turned out, Mugabe grabbed the reins of power again and at the time of this writing, he is still in power as the president of Zimbabwe.

 

Women activists in Zimbabwe have been beaten and forced to strip by police and detained with their babies, according to a report alleging violations by security forces by one of Zimbabwe's leading civil rights organizations. International organizations such as Amnesty International as well as human rights bodies in Zimbabwe have made similar assessments that human and political rights are increasingly under attack in the country. Zimbabwe police and private security guards employed by mining companies in the Marange diamond fields were shooting, beating and unleashing attack dogs on poor, local unlicensed miners in 2011.

 

In 2009, Radio Africa had obtained exclusive video footage showing a number of police recruits in Zimbabwe being tortured and beaten in a series of sickening assaults by what appeared to be their instructors. In one horrifying attack, a recruit was pinned down by six officers with one stepping on his back as laughing instructors whipped and kick the defenseless man. The recruit can be heard screaming while one officer shouted, wuraya (kill him). Other officers were also heard shouting “Castrate him.” and “Step on his throat.” You certainly wouldn’t want to be in police custody in that country.

 

According to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the government of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of the law. There are assaults on the media, the political opposition, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.

 

This is definitely a country you would never want to live in. Unfortunately millions of people in that country are suffering from the Mugabe regime and until he finally vacates the office of the president of Zimbabwe, the people of the nation will continue to suffer.