Darren LeBlanc

For many years Zimbabwe was considered the “Breadbasket of Africa”. The breadbasket moniker is generally attributed to a region with the richest soil and best climate. Zimbabwe has been a major food contributor to the rest of Africa for decades. It’s soil, the envy of neighboring countries. Additionally, Zimbabwe boasts the spectacular Victoria Falls, which rightfully holds it’s place as one of the seven wonders of the world.  The country had a lot going for it…that is, up until 2000.

The Republic of Zimbabwe

In 2000, President Robert Mugabe began his bogus Land Reform initiative. The story was that he was taking land from the wealthy commercial farmers and redistributing it to the less wealthy. Unfortunately, his fellow wealthy elite became the beneficiaries of the seized land.  It has been much more about race than about economic status. He has worked at removing many of the white landowners in the country and verbally said he plans to remove them all. Unfortunately, the white commercial farmers are the very people that produced all the food that fed the country…and much of Africa. The recipients of this land have no desire to farm, so the premiere land in the continent yields no crops.

A few fixed elections later and Mugabe is still in control (allegedly using intimidation, violence and even assassination to keep himself there). Even last month when I was there white farmers were still being kicked off their land. The country is now importing much of its food and gets literally 70% of its income from foreign aid. Since the farms have been shut down the currency has suffered from hyperinflation. Millions of percent inflation from 2000 through this year. The store owners would set prices 3 times a day….and the increases would be so significant that a pay check on Friday would be worthless come Saturday. Four times the government decided to lop off a huge number of zeroes and start with a new dollar bill; a 50,000,000,000 would now be $5. Finally, earlier this year, the country canceled the Zimbabwean dollar and officially began to use South African Rand most prominently.

Last year though, as the food supply was low and money was in flux, the shelves of the stores were often bare. People had to drive out of the country to buy food…or buy it off the black market. It’s almost inconceivable for we westerners, that this is happening in 2009. People would be arrested for taking pictures or video of these things though…anything that could make the government look bad was quickly squashed.  But that was last year…this year is getting better. The money is stabilizing, but there are still over 30% of the country that would literally starve were it not for major food aid initiatives. There are hundreds in the jails who starve every month because the government doesn’t have money to feed them, and hundreds of thousands who struggle to even pay the $20/yr it might cost to go to school.

Yes, the money is stabilizing…now all we need is for Mugabe to die.

PS – some of you are asking why did we go, and what did we get done? That will have to wait till part two :)
PSS – Yes, I remember that I’m missing Part 3 of the “Lakeland Revival”. It’s coming soon!