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March 2009: The terrible inflation has ended, but people still have a hard time buying food and there is starvation. President Mugabee, a Marxist leader of Zimbabwe's independence movement three decades ago, and his cronies, have given their country disastrous leadership. Mugabee leads as one of the world's foremost clowns.
March 2008: "World Economic Forum has just placed Zimbabwe among the worst tourist destinations in the world, 117th out of 130 countries surveyed." BBC
Between Zambia and South Africa north and south, Botswana and Mozambique east and west. Landlocked. Slightly larger than Montana. Tropical. Capital: Harare.
Independence in 1980. The only ruler since: the leader of the independence movement, Robert Mugabe, first as Prime Minister then in 1987 as President.
Presidents elected by popular vote to six-years terms.
According to the CIA Factbook, Mugabe rigged the elections for the year 2002. The Commonwealth responded by suspending Zimbabwe, and later Mugabe removed Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.
Unicameral legislature: 150 seats. Members elected by popular vote to five-year terms.
Mugabe has announced that he will step down when his "revolution" is complete. He claims this to mean the redistribution of white-owned lands and choosing his successor.
Figures unless otherwise stated are from the CIA Factbook.
Factbook note for 2009 estimates: the Zimbabwean dollar was taken out of circulation, making Zimbabwe's GDP at the official exchange rate a highly inaccurate statistic.
Estimated per capita GDP:
2008 $200 (ranks last)
2007 $200
2007 $200
GDP annual real (not per capita) growth rate estimate:
2008: -12%
2007: -5.5%
2006: -4.6%
Unemployment rate:
2009:
95%
Distribution of wealth as of 1995: the most wealthy 10 percent of the population have a 40.4 percent of the consumption.
Exports cotton, tobacco, gold, ferroalloys, textiles and clothing.
Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP: 3.8 (estimated for 2006).
Factbook: "The government of Zimbabwe faces a wide variety of difficult economic problems. Its 1998-2002 involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. The government's land reform program, characterized by chaos and violence, has badly damaged the commercial farming sector, the traditional source of exports and foreign exchange and the provider of 400,000 jobs, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of food products."
Deaths: 16.19. Births: 31.49
July 2009: 11.39 million
July 2008: 12.383 million
Density estimated in 2005: 33 persons persons per square kilometer. Per square kilometer of arable land: 396 persons.
Something like three million Zimbabwians have fled across the border into South Africa, where they are refugees.
Infant mortality estimated for 2009: 32.31 -- a dubious figure.
Average life expectancy at birth estimated for 2009: 46.36 years, up from 39.73 in 2008 and 36.67 years in 2005.
Living with HIV/AIDS, ages 15 to 49: 24.6 percent (2001 estimate).
Males 94.2 percent
Females 87.2 percent
Christian and part indigenous, 50 percent. Christian, 25 percent. Indigenous beliefs, 24 percent. Other, 1percent.
Ranks last, 111th, in the Economist Magazine's 2005 Quality-of-Life index.
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Copyright © 2008 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.