Your Country is Fucked: Zimbabwe

So, you like a real shit storm huh? Then welcome to Zimbabwe...

Zimbabwe is one of the most fucked nations on this entire globe.

This country, just north of South Africa, teems with 11 million people in an area the size of Montana. However, don't worry about overcrowding, thanks to several factors, your chances of sticking around aren't good. Out of those 11 million, a full 1.8 million are living with HIV/AIDS, and the WHO estimates that by 2020, the incidence rate will be 24.8%. Take for instance, AIDS in America, undoubtedly a scourge with the hundreds of thousands impacted by the disease, nevertheless the incidence rate is .6...In other words take 200 Zimbabweans and 200 Americans. 50 folks from Zimbabwe are HIV/AIDS positive for every 1 in the U.S.

That's not funny folks, that's Black Death incidence rate...and as a consequence, the life expectancy for a child born today is the grand old age of 45.

Just like having sex in Zimbabwe....

 If you're lucky enough to escape the scourge of AIDS, there's always the matter of lunatic President Mugabe. His Maoist regime is just short of genocidal. Since taking reigns of power in 1987, the country has been utterly wracked by civil strife, sectarian warfare and ideological purges. What kind of ideaology? Well, for instance, suppose you're an average businessman doing well and the Army comes to shake you down...they don't bust your knuckles...they do this...

flaying your entreprenurial class = bad for business.

Thus, another point to illustrate arises. This is a profoundly destitute country. The term Hyperinflation does this no justice. The Zimbabwe dollar is worth 1/30,000th of a U.S. dollar. Perhaps the CIA's site illustrates the true depth of the problem, and it is worth reading in detail....

The government of Zimbabwe faces a wide variety of difficult economic problems as it struggles with an unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued official exchange rate, hyperinflation, and bare store shelves. 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. The EU and the US provide food aid on humanitarian grounds. Badly needed support from the IMF has been suspended because of the government's arrears on past loans and the government's unwillingness to enact reforms that would stabilize the economy. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe routinely prints money to fund the budget deficit, causing the official annual inflation rate to rise from 32% in 1998, to 133% in 2004, 585% in 2005, past 1,000% in 2006, and 26,000% in November 2007, and to 11.2 million percent in 2008. Meanwhile, the official exchange rate fell from approximately 1 (revalued) Zimbabwean dollar per US dollar in 2003 to 30,000 per US dollar in September 2007.

 

This Confederate $50 is worth roughly half the Zimbabwe GDP.

Things weren't always this bleak. For nearly a millenium Zimbabwe/Rhodesia was the home of the Bantu. The Bantu helped create one of Africa's truly great dynasties, the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, whose capital was the exquisite Great Zimbabwe. Like other cities of antiquity, Great Zimbabwe featured well-dressed stones, bustling commerce and was an advanced civilization opening African trade with their Eastern Muslim neighbors.  These days, as noted above, not so much.

I'd like to leave with something, anything positive to say. But, some countries are truly frightening hells on Earth. Zimbabwe definitely falls into that category...

Trust me, you're better off skipping this one.