Zimbabwe Update -- More Economic Problems

Every time you think things can't get worse in Mad Bobby Mugabe's Maoist paradise, they do. Now comes a report that energy production has plummeted and is endangering other parts of the already crippled economy.

The AP reports:

Drastic coal shortages despite massive natural deposits have had a ripple effect throughout Zimbabwe's economy and ruined a deal to renovate the country's biggest steelworks, the government has acknowledged.

The energy crisis adds to the economic woes of Zimbabwe, which is already suffering from acute shortages of many basic commodities.

Industry Minister Obert Mpofu told a panel of lawmakers in Harare recently that Indian steel maker Global Steel Holdings pulled out of an investment deal at the Zicosteel steelworks in central Zimbabwe because of concerns about lack of coal supplies.

....

The broke state railroad company, also suffering breakdowns and shortages of replacement equipment, failed to deliver available local coal to industry and business. Even brewers in Harare say they were forced to import coal by road from neighboring South Africa at three times the cost in scarce hard currency to keep their boilers fired up.

No! Not the brewers!

Lager beer prices rose by nearly 50 percent this week, the latest in almost monthly hikes this year that turned many impoverished Zimbabweans to traditional home brews.

Zimbabwe is suffering record inflation of 1,200 percent, the highest in the world, in its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980 blamed on land seizures, mismanagement and corruption.

Even the production of bread has been affected.

Managers at one Harare bakery said a cycle of 19 round-the-clock daily bakes was routinely disrupted, spoiling dough already in the ovens, due to power outages affected by the closure of a nearby state-owned coal-fired power facility.

Read it here.

Such are the fruits of anti-colonialist ideology. One of the great problems of this age, one that has caused immeasurable suffering to millions and millions of people, has been the persistence of long-discredited anti-colonial ideological perspectives throughout much of the developing world. Nobody illustrates this monstrous imbecility more than Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe.