HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Pensioners buy a single egg when they shop. School attendance is falling because parents can't afford to feed their children, let alone educate them. One desperate man who couldn't make ends meet took his own life. Runaway prices are changing, perhaps for generations, the way people live and die in Zimbabwe, a once relatively prosperous nation now ravaged by the world's highest inflation rate.
Economists and international donors say mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian regime - especially economic disruption related to his controversial policy of seizing white-owned farms - is behind an annual inflation rate now close to 400 percent. The government points the finger elsewhere, at culprits including falling commodity prices.
Zimbabwe once boasted one of the best education systems in Africa. But enrollment is down 30 percent since 2000, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, because increasing numbers of children are forced to work, beg or become prostitutes.
| The LLL -- heck, perhaps the entire world -- might condemn us, but I think it's time we sent a Special Ops team to whack Bob. Too many innocents are suffering. |
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