Zimbabwe crisis is it spreading to South Africa?

[FortLaudy 10]

AGRICULTURAL COLLAPSE RUINS ECONOMY

Hit by drought, HIV/AIDS and economic meltdown, Zimbabwe is in the grip of its worst humanitarian crisis since independence.

Female life expectancy 43 years

Agriculture devastated

World's highest inflation

Twenty years ago the country was hailed as an African success story and dubbed the "breadbasket" of southern Africa. Now it has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, and a large proportion of the population is dependent on food aid.

Farming is the backbone of Zimbabwe's economy, but agriculture has been crippled by the combined effects of drought, HIV/AIDS and controversial government land reforms.

Unemployment is sky-high and galloping inflation has made basic foodstuffs, fuel, health and school unaffordable for many. Millions of Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries.

Zimbabwe's crisis escalated when efforts to forge a power-sharing government - following disputed presidential elections in March 2008 - ended in deadlock.

The impasse was resolved in early 2009 and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister with Robert Mugabe remaining president. The new unity government now faces the challenge of putting the country back on its feet.

Key facts

Estimated life expectancy in 2006 43 years (women), 44 years (men)

( WHO 2008)

Percentage of population malnourished 45 percent ( WFP)

No. displaced More than 880,000 (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2007)

Percentage of people living on less than $2 a day 83 percent (U.N. Human Development Report 2007/2008)

http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/ZW_CRI.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/19/world/vi...ml?pagewanted=1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1878846.stm

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28421

DISPATCH FROM SOUTH AFRICA

'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer'

Death chant at ANC funeral leads to more murder of whites

WELKOM, South Africa – The chanting of "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" at the funeral of the ANC member who coined the phrase is adding more fuel to the political fire here, as the attacks on white farmers continue unabated.

The ethnic cleansing of Southern Africa's commercial farm communities has taken the lives of 1,334 farmers, farm workers and their kin since 1994, the year the ANC took power. The farmers were killed most often in violent, organized attacks, always by young African males. Add to the death toll 12 farmers killed in Zimbabwe and four in Namibia. In 85 percent of the killings, not one item was stolen from the farms and farmhouses.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has called the farm murders of whites "the final stage of the revolution."

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe.

[FortLaudy 10]

Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe.

Yup, and this is spreading to South Africa, no doubt judging by the latest news out of there. It's sad because some white people there can't trace their heritage, they're a mixture of Dutch, French and British, so it's not so easy to just pack up and "go back to Europe" as Mugabe suggests.