Opinion: A devastating situation

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe seems as determined to starve his people as he was to destroy democracy. In his desperate attempt to hold on to power, the man who has been Zimbabwe's leader since independence in 1980, has lost his grip on reality. That may be too charitable.

At a time when a devastating drought is threatening the food supply for a large swath of Sub-Saharan Africa, Mugabe has pushed the nation's productive white farmers off their land. The result has been a 60 percent plunge in agricultural output. The World Food Program estimates that as many as 6-million Zimbabweans are at risk of starvation, and the ripple effect for the neighboring countries of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique -- countries used to receiving corn exports from Zimbabwe -- is also expected to be severe.

People in Zimbabwe call this disaster "Mugabe's famine." He devastated agricultural production by using a campaign of terror to shut down many of the country's white-owned commercial farms. As a means of consolidating his power, Mugabe has been encouraging landless war veterans to invade farms, disrupt planting and violently intimidate both the white owners and their black farmhands. Now, a new law codifies this chaos. As of Aug. 9, an estimated 2,900 white farmers have been officially evicted from their land.

While land reform is a legitimate issue -- 90 percent of the country's arable land was in white hands -- Mugabe's approach has been lawless and destructive. In the past, when Britain attempted to assist the leader in paying for land redistribution, Mugabe squandered the largess by giving over prime farming tracts to his political chums, who proceeded to allow the fields to go fallow.

Reports out of Zimbabwe are difficult to assess since the dictator has banished most foreign media. But the Sunday Telegraph in London recently reported that the war veterans who violently occupied the land are now being moved aside for Mugabe insiders. "More than 110 government ministers, senior military officers and their wives, mayors and police chiefs have now taken over farms," according to the Telegraph.

The question for the international community is what, if anything, can be done? Mugabe is playing politics with the very lives of his people, and the West has little leverage to change anything. The best hope for a return to sanity comes from African leaders themselves. They know the future prosperity of their own nations depends on attracting foreign investment that requires domestic stability and the rule of law. Leaders like South African President Thabo Mbeki could have significant influence over Mugabe, who fancies himself a great pan-African leader. It is hard to understand why Mbeki and his fellow leaders have done so little to avert this coming crisis. And it makes one wonder whether the new African Union -- a newly formed coalition of African states established for the promotion of regional peace and stability -- will have any bite at all.

Zimbabwe was once known as the bread-basket of Sub-Saharan Africa. It had some of the most productive farms on the continent. Now, its people are starving and its leader seems to be sinking deeper into paranoia. Zimbabwe is yet another sad, tragic story in a part of the world that doesn't need another.

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