Just when we think we have seen the basest behavior of a government as the Myanmar junta cruelly ignored and continues to ignore the dire needs of its own people in the wake of a devastating cyclone, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe shows that he has the capacity to challenge the Myanmar government's degree of callousness and illegitimacy. Mugabe, who faces a travel ban except to UN conferences and forums, incredibly chose to attend the UN food conference in Rome this past week. His country, which was once an agriculturally prosperous nation with a richly productive farming sector, now wallows in desperate poverty. Some four million of its 12 million inhabitants rely on foreign aid organizations to provide them with food. Two million of its inhabitants carry the HIV virus and also depend on foreign aid organizations for sustenance and medical support. It was Mugabe's agricultural policies that destroyed the farming sector. Rather than provide for a rational transition from a colonial economy, which saw commercial farming controlled, albeit efficiently, by the white minority, Mugabe seized the farms and put them in the hands of small farmers with no expertise in little more than subsistence farming. In terms of throwing out the white oppressors, it was a popular move. In economic terms and in terms of Zimbabwe's future, it was a disaster. The whole system collapsed. Now, just as Mugabe was leaving the Rome conference to return home, his government in Harare issued an order that all aid organizations in Zimbabwe immediately halt activities. Suggestions have been made that the organizations were engaged in anti-government activities, but critics say that it is a move meant to intimidate the opposition three weeks before the runoff presidential election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who himself was briefly detained for no apparent reason by Mugabe's security forces just a couple of days ago. Aid workers from various organizations say that with 4 millions mouths to feed, they hardly have time to engage in politics. Zimbabwe, with inflation running at over 100,000 percent, is clearly a bankrupt country. The moral bankruptcy of Mugabe and his henchmen is far greater than the economic catastrophe they have created. __
