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Text | Han Shasha
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introduction
Can you believe it? There are 10 billion denominations of money in the world, a country where everyone is a "billionaire household", but it is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and this is the current situation in Zimbabwe. Money only represents numbers, does not represent purchasing power, and is not even worth as much as a piece of waste paper.
It's hard to imagine a country that was once Africa's breadbasket, once guaranteed a large number of exports every year, and whose people lived a more prosperous life in the continent's countries.
So what happened to Zimbabwe, why did it get to where it is today, what has happened to it on its development, and what is the story behind its economic decline?
(Zimbabwe Independence Day Celebration)
Zimbabwe's past and present
Zimbabwe is located in the southeastern region of Africa, with a population of 15.5 million living on 390,000 square kilometers of land, bordering Mozambique, South Africa and other countries, with no coastline, and is a purely landlocked country.
Like other African countries, Zimbabwe was a colony of European countries. In 1888, British explorer Rhodes entered the Zimbabwe region, discovered this nice piece of land, and began its nearly century-long colonial era.
In 1895, Rhodes named it Rhodesia, and then collected a large number of "immigrants" from all over the world who wanted to come to Africa to make a fortune. They formed armies here to carry out the industrial revolution and infrastructure development of the African subcontinent.
(Web images have nothing to do with content)
Rhodes was a man of outstanding ability, and he soon discovered that this small, inconspicuous landlocked country had advantages unmatched by other African countries.
Unlike most countries with a hot and arid climate and no rain all year round, Zimbabwe is a paradise for growing crops due to its topography, fertile land, sufficient light, and timely rain irrigation.
In addition, it also has rich mineral resources, so under the leadership of Rhodes, Zimbabwe began to vigorously develop the economic business based on plantation, supplemented by mining, and soon became an economic power second only to South Africa on the African continent with the convenience brought by natural advantages.
(Gold Caves in Zimbabwe)
Around 1920, after many years of business in Rhodes, Zimbabwe has become a veritable "breadbasket of Africa". As a result, more European immigrants were attracted to make their fortunes here.
At one point, it became Africa's largest food exporter, and began to send food to other regions to solve the famine of various countries and use it to strengthen itself.
Unlike other countries that suffered greatly from colonizers, Zimbabwe became very active and prosperous because of the presence of these immigrants and builders.
(Agriculture in Zimbabwe)
The arrival of immigrants has breathed new life into the continent, and they have gradually put the country on the road to modern industry by building modern hospitals, buildings, roads and other modern facilities in Zimbabwe.
After the end of World War II, colonial countries around the world launched campaigns for independence. Not to be left behind, Zimbabwe broke away from British colonialists in a more peaceful way and became a relatively independent country.
However, Zimbabwe is not without contradictions, its domestic racial discrimination is very serious, the contradictions between white immigrants and native blacks are sharp, and the upper ruling class of state institutions is still occupied by immigrants for many years.
(Zimbabwean farmers harvesting sunflowers in 1956)
With colonial advantages, less than one-tenth of whites occupy more than 80% of Zimbabwe's arable land. With the awakening of independence, Zimbabwe's indigenous people began to rebel against outsiders.
After 15 years of struggle, Zimbabweans achieved full independence in 1980 under the leadership of Mugabe. Since then, the government has been owned by blacks, and Zimbabwe has begun the thirty-year Mugabe era.
But the advent of the Mugabe era also sounded the death knell for Zimbabwe's economic development. Under the wrong economic policies, Zimbabwe's economy declined rapidly, and after years of hard work, it finally became the poorest country in Africa.
(Former President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe)
2. Thirty years from the "breadbasket of Africa" to Mugabe, the poorest in the world
It's hard to imagine that a poor country like Zimbabwe had its heels when it was the second richest country in Africa, with a GDP of $1,100 around 1980, more than four times that of China.
The reputation of the "breadbasket of Africa" was supported by Zimbabwe's developed agriculture, which allowed many African countries to escape the famine caused by drought at that time.
In addition to having food, Zimbabwe was once the world's second largest exporter of tobacco, and even the "huazi", which our domestic smokers flocked, once relied on buying raw materials from Zimbabwe.
(Zimbabweans harvesting grain)
In addition, Zimbabwe is rich in minerals, of which the annual output of gold is about 30 tons, ranking among the top ten in the world all year round. It also has one of the highest quality chrome ores in the world.
Other well-known economic products in Zimbabwe include ivory, crocodile products, especially high-quality crocodile leather, which is the most popular high-end raw material for luxury bags of major brands.
With these advantages, Zimbabwe in the eighties of the last century, once considered to be the strongest industrial country in Africa, you can hardly imagine how valuable the Zimbabwean dollar was at that time, 1 Zimbabwean dollar can be exchanged for 1.5 US dollars.
(Zimbabwe crocodile)
But all this prosperity ended with the wrong policies of the Mugabe era. Especially in the 90s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the African allies that everyone once won for were no longer popular, and Zimbabwe's economy began to decline.
In order to change this phenomenon, Mugabe began a "violent land reform" project in the 90s, which specifically involved the seizure of white land and distribution to blacks.
The natives, who received support from the top, began to rebel against the local white farmers and capitalists, who entered the white estates with weapons and expelled the owners and directly occupied the original land.
(Zimbabwean)
In this precarious situation, the white people of Zimbabwe have begun a massive exodus, along with advanced agricultural machinery and technology.
Coupled with successive droughts, Zimbabwe's agricultural production has fallen off a cliff, and what was once Africa's largest food exporter now depends on food imports to feed its citizens.
The exodus of whites and the decline in food production directly contributed to Zimbabwe's economic decline. Mugabe finally began to panic, but he was not a politician with the ability to run the country and did not realize that he had done something wrong.
(Bundles of Zimbabwe dollars have low purchasing power)
Instead, he came up with one of Zimbabwe's biggest ever swoons – printing money in large quantities, creating a false boom in the market, which in turn caused severe inflation.
In 2008, Zimbabwe printed a banknote of up to 1,000,000 billion, and you even need to stop and count the "0" after it to read the number correctly. Ironically, such a large amount of bills was less than $200 at the time.
With the advent of a new era of world economic development, Zimbabwe not only failed to seize the opportunity, but exacerbated the trend of poverty, coupled with the rapid growth of the population, all kinds of situations quickly caused headaches for the government.
in Mugabe
After international organizations refused to bail it out, Mugabe's government decided to cut spending while pursuing a free-trade economic policy that followed the trends of the times.
However, he ignores the important fact that it is necessary to have a strong industrial base, although Zimbabwe was once considered an African industrial power, but after all, it was only relative, and the exodus of whites almost paralyzed Zimbabwe's industry.
Under this policy, the bad situation in the country has been further exacerbated, a large number of people have lost their jobs, the education rate has declined, and people have nothing to do but have children at home. Under the vicious circle, Zimbabwe's last bit of family has finally been tossed away.
(Zimbabwe under inflation)
By 1998, Zimbabwe's domestic economy was in worse shape, with inflation soaring to 32.6 per cent, but it was not the lowest value.
What's more, in the face of the strained situation at home, Mugabe even intervened in the Congolese civil war, thinking of taking advantage of the chaos to make some money from the Congo to fill the holes in the country.
However, his calculations were doomed to fail, and not only did he not change the economic situation, but the huge war expenditure exacerbated the pressure on the state. The domestic people finally couldn't bear it, and riots and strikes began everywhere to push Mugabe from the throne.
(Zimbabwean)
By 2008, Zimbabwe's economy had completely collapsed, the economic crisis caused by inflation had filled every corner of Zimbabwe, almost all public utilities were paralyzed, and many people said that the country was completely finished.
Reasons for Zimbabwe's decline
Indeed, Zimbabwe's decline was not achieved overnight, but was an inevitable product of social development and intrinsic effects. Can you say that it is a country that does not work hard? It's not.
In the early days of seeking independence, Europeans who settled in the land tried to develop the land and operate it as a "granary", using the local indigenous cultivation land to extract minerals, and the money earned was not only used to build the state, but also put the rest into their own pockets.
(White people living in Zimbabwe)
We can say that Zimbabwe was once rich, but the native Zimbabweans were poor and backward, they could only engage in low-level manual labor, and missed the valuable stage of using knowledge to get rich.
As the whites left, they took with them advanced productivity such as technology and equipment, a lot of money, and almost all investment, and this gap led directly to Zimbabwe's rapid decline.
Of course, internal reasons also account for a large proportion. Since Mugabe came to power, the wrong economic policy has accelerated the country's decline.
(Harare, Zimbabwe's largest city)
The country's development should be adapted to local conditions and based on the actual situation, but it is clear that the Mugabe government lacks a clear understanding of its own country, and without resuming industrial and agricultural production, most of its reserves are used to build the infrastructure of a modern country.
After the economic crisis, public facilities were shut down, and even the basic national plans of health care and education were not preserved. When the economic environment was declining, violent land reform led to a massive exodus of migrants dedicated to developing the land.
When the country was already in high debt, it also tried to speculate and learn from others to make war money, which was the next policy of the state institutions when managing the country, and eventually led to its inflation level directly refreshing the world history.
However, the situation in Zimbabwe could have been corrected in 2009 and gradually changed the environment after abandoning the use of its own currency, but the outbreak of the coup in 2017 once again pushed Zimbabwe into flames.
(Zimbabwean)
Before the time was fully ripe, the government reactivated the Zimbabwe dollar. When the economic development was once again uncontrollable, it failed to sum up the experience from the previous lessons, and still tried to save the domestic decay economy by printing a large amount of money.
These are the reasons why Zimbabwe has come to where it is today. The current Zimbabwean government, winning decided last year to re-enable the US dollar instead of Zimbabwean dollars, once again gave up its own monetary and economic control, verified with his own experience and told the world: Who said that the same place can not fall twice, look, I can.
Resources
LI Xinfeng. The origin of the land problem in Zimbabwe[C]//African Studies, Vol. 1 (Vol. 1), 2010.2011.
GAO Qiufu. Analysis of severe economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe[J].West Asia and Africa, 2007(12):6.)