Does Mugabe Have The Collapse Playbook?
Robert Mugabe has thus far done everything known to bring about an economic collapse in Zimbabwe, and perhaps invented a couple of new twists along the way. Lately, his steps have become as predictable as they are disastrous, with price freezes, confiscation, and the state takeover of foreign assets. Now Mugabe has announced a wage freeze, a move that guarantees an end to any remaining buying power among Zimbabwe's working class:
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has banned all pay rises without authorisation and given himself extra powers in a new bid to curb the world's highest inflation rate, state media said Friday.As part of the measures, all rents, school fees and service charges must be frozen for the next six months.
"No one in private or public sectors can now raise salaries, wages, rents, service charges, prices and school fees on account of increases or anticipated increases in the consumer price index, the official and unofficial exchange rates, or valued added tax and duty," said the government-controlled Herald newspaper.
One has to be reminded of King Canute, showing his acolytes and fawners on the English shore that he could not stop the tide by his command. Mugabe qualifies as Canute's polar opposite. He apparently believes that he can stop a 7,600% inflation rate by ensuring that everyone but himself becomes rapidly insolvent.
Already, Zimbabwe has an 80% unemployment rate. That makes a wage freeze almost irrelevant to inflation. Employers won't have to raise salaries, but if they don't offer any buying power in return for labor, the labor will cease to exist. Employees will leave in order to look for other ways to subsist, and whatever remains of Zimbabwe's economy will crash into oblivion.
With no economy, the government will have no revenue. Without revenue, it will have no means with which to pay the armed forces, among others. Soldiers may have some issues with remaining loyal when what little money they have won't buy them anything at all. Even if they get raises, where will they spend the money? Hardly any retail business can stay open now, and the wage freeze will rapidly start closing doors.
The only economy left will be the black market, in which the government cannot participate. The wage freeze will push the rest of the nation into the underground economy, and new power brokers will emerge outside of government control. Eventually they will control the arms in civil society, and the new warlords will bust Zimbabwe into pieces. It's the anarchy playbook, where strongmen exist outside of any sense of law and order, and those strongmen impose law rather than the people.
If Mugabe has set out to destroy Zimbabwe, he's certainly made all the right moves in the exact order necessary to do so. It would make a fascinating laboratory for economic and political incompetence if it wasn't so tragic and unnecessary.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on August 31, 2007 7:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments (6)
Posted by Cybrludite | August 31, 2007 8:46 AM
Sure his name is Mugabe, and not Narlyhotep? Geeze...
Posted by NRA Life Member | August 31, 2007 8:48 AM
In a better world, this disaster that did not have to occur would serve as an ultimate teaching tool and moment. It would become part of every high school and college curriculum, and stand as a prime example of how not to run an economy. The fact that this will not occur is good reason to beleive that the disaster will repeat itself unnecessarily in some other country. It is evidence that a socialist centrally planned economy is "The Road To Serfdom", and it will once again NOT BE TAUGHT to another generation. Future socialists will repeat the error furthering poverty and misery, and insuring their election to office by promising utopia. Makes me want to puke.
Posted by Jeff | August 31, 2007 11:00 AM
Wow,
yet another African thug idolized by liberals and the media simply because of the color of his skin.
Its amazing that black leaders the world over continue to provide fodder for racists everywhere.
Maybe its just that the media gives them the cover to be the thugs they are. Something they would be no matter what color their skin was by the way.
Posted by eaglewings | August 31, 2007 11:01 AM
It's all Bush's fault. First Katrina now Zimbabwe, the President must be indicted for these crimes. /sarcasm.
Actually the fault lies both with the President of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and with the worst Pres the US has known in this century, Castro favorite and acolyte, Jimmy Peanut Carter. I pity the people of Zimbabwe, but as a textbook lesson on the inevitable outcome of socialist/ liberal 'economic' theories, one couldn't find a better example. Mugabe is perfectly named from the stem 'mugger' for he mugged this formerly prosperous nation and raped her as well.
Posted by wolfwalker | August 31, 2007 11:15 AM
The only economy left will be the black market, in which the government cannot participate.
The government can always participate in the black market. And often does. That's one of the things that distinguishes a thugocracy from any other kind of government: government workers have better access to the black market than anybody else, and the government itself uses the black market to get what it needs.
It's the anarchy playbook, where strongmen exist outside of any sense of law and order, and those strongmen impose law rather than the people.
I think anarchy is the wrong word. The end of Zimbabwe's flameout will probably be some form of feudalism, where leaders build armies of followers and become lords of various levels, imposing absolute rule over their fiefs. In anarchy there are no rules at all; in feudalism there is at least one: might makes right. It would be interesting to know Mugabe's early history -- how old-fashioned (ie, tribe-oriented) was his upbringing? His recent actions seem very strongly driven by a tribalist mentality, and they're all backfiring (as so much of native-African social/cultural/economic policy backfires) because tribalist ideas don't work worth a damn in the modern world.
Posted by Chooch | September 1, 2007 4:06 PM
"Who is John Galt?"