Two Countries

by hilzoy

Zimbabwe's meltdown continues apace, but today (the 21st) we have the added irony of Robert Mugabe's birthday celebration, to which his starving populace is being asked to contribute:

"President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe turned 83 on Wednesday to the strains of the song “God Bless President Mugabe” on state-controlled radio, along with an interview on state television, a 16-page paean to his rule in Harare’s daily newspaper and the prospect of a grand birthday party — costly enough to feed thousands of people for months, his critics argued — on Saturday.

Zimbabwe’s economy is so dire that bread vanished from store shelves across the country on Wednesday after bakeries shut down, saying government price controls were requiring them to sell loaves at a loss. The price controls are supposed to shield consumers from the nation’s rampant inflation, which now averages nearly 1,600 percent annually.

In Harare, the capital, the police banned demonstrations and political gatherings in the city’s sprawling townships on Wednesday, citing the threat of looting and vandalism. Slum dwellers clashed with policemen on Sunday after the police blocked a court-approved rally by political opponents of Mr. Mugabe.

His critics called the ban an act of desperation, and some said that Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis was beginning to goad citizens into political action despite the threat of arrest and beating."

Meanwhile, the teachers have gone on strike, and Sokwanele reports:

"The state controlled price of mealie meal, our staple food has just risen some 9567% in one jump and not long ago people were buying it for $500 -600 per 10 kg and now it is heading up to over $20 000, half of a domestic workers monthly wage.

10kgs lasts one person about 4 weeks."

A 9567% price increase in the staple food? Dear God.

Just next door, however, things are different:

"Paulo Zucula listens intently to the aid workers' firsthand reports: Whole villages submerged. Hungry families. An estimated 70,000 now homeless. The nightly updates list the mounting challenges as Mozambique experiences the worst flooding since 2000 and 2001.

Yet, Mr. Zucula, the head of Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute, exudes calm, even satisfaction. Unlike six years ago, when the flooding killed some 700 people, the government says that fewer than 10 people have died so far.

This time, the Mozambican government moved early and deliberately to avert a massive humanitarian crisis. Months ago, it began preparing to evacuate villages, moved food supplies into the area, and had set up early warning systems throughout the flood-prone Zambezi River basin.

"If you're looking for a success story of an African government that's trying to make things better for its people, this is a very good example of that," says Mike Huggins, spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) in southern Africa. "Their response [to flooding this time] is massively better. The government is doing a lot this year to try to mitigate the impact — they've evacuated everyone from the really critical areas, they've made sure that the U.N. and the aid organizations are all working together to bring a coordinated response.""

Mozambique isn't out of the woods yet -- a category three cyclone is bearing down on it even as I write -- but this really is extraordinary. To see why, you need to know three things.

First, Mozambique has some pretty serious potential for flooding. Along with some smaller rivers, the Zambezi and the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees both run through it. They do not, as far as I know, have much in the way of flood control: no levees, dams, and so forth. So when it rains a lot, there are floods Big floods. In 2000 not only did seven hundred people die in the floods, but half a million people were left homeless.

Second, Mozambique is desperately poor. The World Bank puts its per capita national income at $310/year, and life expectancy at 42 years. I don't think it's one of the world's ten poorest countries anymore, as it was in 1999 when I went there, but it's still desperately poor.

Third, it has one of those horrible histories that one might think would excuse almost anything. It was colonized by Portugal, which wasn't as bad a colonial power as Belgium or Germany, but was nonetheless pretty bad. Unlike many west east (duh) African countries, it was a major center of the slave trade. Portugal abruptly decided to pull out in 1974, leaving Mozambique with virtually no trained anyone (I can't find the statistics now, but there was something like one doctor and three lawyers, or possibly the other way around. For the entire country.)

The somewhat surprised resistance group that found itself in control of Mozambique when the Portuguese pulled out was Marxist, though what they understood of Marx is open to question; certainly at some point their Marxism became tactical (they badly wanted help, and tried to get it from the USSR; they even tried to join the Warsaw Pact, which I've always found sort of pitiful.) In any case, what was then Rhodesia funded a civil war against the government the next year; when the white government in Rhodesia fell, South Africa continued to fund it. This led to about fifteen years of truly ghastly civil war -- the kind in which people are nailed to trees and boiled alive, and children are kidnapped and forced to kill their parents. The anti-government rebels were worse, but neither side was good.

When the apartheid government fell in South Africa, the rebels lost their funding, and a miracle happened: the two sides in this horrific war made peace, and the opposition became a political party. The government gave up Marxism-Leninism, and has tried pretty hard to do a good job. (It was trying before, but the combination of a civil war and an unfortunate ideology didn't help.) It's not perfect, and there are reports of corruption (I think this is worse than when I was there), but all things considered, Mozambique has made astonishing progress. Its economy is growing by 7-8% a year (except in 2000, when the floods washed its growth away), and has been for quite a while now. (Admittedly, this is a lot easier to manage when your initial GDP is barely detectable, but still.)

And now, the little country that could has managed such a good response to pretty serious flooding that only ten people have died so far. I think this is absolutely heroic, given Mozambique's resources.

It just goes to show what decent government can do; just as Zimbabwe shows the opposite. May Zimbabwe get the government its people deserve as soon as possible, and may the floods recede in scrappy little Mozambique.

Comments

[Mister Nice Guy]

What, you mean sometimes a national government can make a problem *better*? That there's something people can do besides throw up their hands and say, "Government can't solve the problem, government *is* the problem!"

Gee, but that might involve some work. And worse yet, thought. And worst of all, co-operation.

[Charles Bird]

I glad the NYT took notice.

[Quarterican]

This is a shamefully minor comment/quibble with such a fine post, but "Unlike many west African countries," Mozambique happens to be on the eastern side of Africa.

[hilzoy]

Ack, silly me. I have this left/right impairment. Obviously, the West African countries were the epicenter of the (American) slave trade; it's most of the East African countries that were largely spared. Except for Mozambique. Correction forthcoming.

[Donald Johnson]

For some reason the Reagan Administration refused to help Renamo (the resistance group you mention) and actually told the truth about how terrible they were, comparing them at one point to the Khmer Rouge. I've always been confused by this, because Jonas Savimbi over in Angola was just as bad and he was one of our heroic child-murdering freedom fighters. Evidently Bob Dole was also bothered by the inconsistency, because he joined in with the American far right in wanting to support Renamo.

His political career did not end on the spot, though wanting to support Renamo puts him several steps lower than someone like Ward Churchill, who only made incredibly moronic statements about 9/11 and didn't advocate giving weapons to Al Qaeda.

[hilzoy]

DJ: yes, for some truly unfathomable reason, Renamo was on the list of Approved Anti-Communist Causes during the 80s. Grover Norquist was also an early supporter. If I didn't already have enough reasons to despise him, that would suffice.

[ScottM]

Thanks for keeping our attention on both parts-- Mozambique's a nice antidote to the despair Zimbabwe inspires.

[Nell]

for some truly unfathomable reason, Renamo was on the list of Approved Anti-Communist Causes during the 80s.

Why unfathomable? What "anti-communist" organization was too horrible for the right wing to support in the 1980s?

I'm interested to know what impact you think the large ANC presence in Mozambique had on the postwar. (Mozambique was the most significant location of 'strategic rear guard' for South Africans fighting apartheid.)

[Donald Johnson]

"Why unfathomable? What "anti-communist" organization was too horrible for the right wing to support in the 1980s?"

Hence my confusion about the fact that the Reagan Administration didn't support Renamo--they were no worse than some of the other groups they did support. Grover and Jesse Helms and Bob Dole were just being consistent.

But it is nice to hear about Mozambique now--one hears so much bad news about Africa it's necessary, I think, to be told of some good news, in part so that people won't give in to a too-easy despair about the continent.

[hilzoy]

DJ: I am genuinely interested in Zimbabwe and Mozambique -- I wouldn't be writing on them if I wasn't -- but it would be Disingenuous and Wrong of me to deny that some tiny part of my motivation was: if people who read this site just happen, incidentally, to get the sort of minor, back-of-the-mind knowledge of a few countries they would not ordinarily read about -- a little bit of granular detail, just by the bye -- that has to be a good thing. Because it is way too easy to think of sub-Saharan Africa as an undifferentiated mass of despair, if you don't live there; and equally easy just not to read stuff about it because catching up on the backstory would take too long.

[Gary Farber]

My friend who was in the State Department for decades, whom I've mentioned here before, including that he was our First Secretary in Botswanna for some time, used to be driven crazy by generalized negative statements about Africa, which he felt were deeply damaging slurs against the various countries that were doing reasonably well -- such as Botswanna.

I've no doubt that he's right that that sort of generalized, undifferentiated, impression, really hurts prospects for the countries where investment is a reasonably safe proposition.

[Nell]

Hilzoy, what years were you there? I was addressing the ANC question to you, but it's a bit buried in my comment above.

[hilzoy]

Nell: 1999, and unfortunately it was about a month, not years. I don't know much about the effect of the ANC.

[vanessa]

Impressive indeed, and casts our own government's lack of advance planning for Katrina in an even more abysmal light.