[eXpat]

Every country, even the poorest ones, in order to function as a nation, needs some basic structures that are the skeleton of the system: education, security, a system of government, an structure of law, etc.
Even if they are corrupt and inefficient, they got to be there. That is what define our "modern" society.
What I find shocking is that here most of those vital systems (Parliament, High court, schools and hospitals) are being shoot down. Is truly a reversion to the tribe level. Is every man for himself again.

[RedStateGreen]

It's just a sad slide of a formerly decent country with an incompetent psycho at the helm.

That could apply to the USA as well....

That did cross my mind when I wrote it ...

[errorist]

What I find shocking is that here most of those vital systems (Parliament, High court, schools and hospitals) are being shoot down. Is truly a reversion to the tribe level. Is every man for himself again.

Survival of the fittest. Individual evolution of the species released from the cage of failed civilization. Re-inventing those corrupted systems again. Doomed to fail 'till conciousness, memory and nature of the species evolves above treshold level needed to live in Utopia (or may I call it Anarchy?)

[timmac]

It's just a sad slide of a formerly decent country with an incompetent psycho at the helm.

That could apply to the USA as well....

Yea and starting with the 44th prez.

[lowem]

i have a feeling that 1000, maybe 2000 years ago, Africa was a much more peaceful & productive place

As recently as 2000 or so, Zimbabwe was considered the "bread basket" of Africa. They were a net food exporter to the other African nations. Somewhere along the line, they hit Peak Food Exports and went into terminal decline ...

[dorlomin]

What I find shocking is that here most of those vital systems (Parliament, High court, schools and hospitals) are being shoot down. Is truly a reversion to the tribe level. Is every man for himself again.

I dont think reverting to a tribal level is everyman for himself, tribalism is people finding strength in the group they belong too, this has happened in Somalia, Iraq, Afgahnistan and now is developing in Zimbabwe. It is a complex system of loyalties, treaties, honour and murder. I think this point is relatively important for people thinking about collapses. Look at collapses that have already happened, even temporaray ones (i.e. immidiate post war Germany).

Humanity is not inherently loners, they are evolved as bieng tribal. Individualism is the product of several centuaries of central government in the west.

As for Zimbabwe, well I dont think they have descended into tribalism yet. The MDC and the unions are still holding together as coherent cross tribal entities. They chose not to oppose violently specificaly to prevent Mugabwe from being able to inflame tribal passions and devide and conquer. They took the murders and the beatings and did not fight back with there own killings and that has kept a narrow gap open for a return to a multicultural Zimbabwe.

[skeptik]

I have a friend who is visiting Harare at the moment. Ive been talking to him via text message - the only way I could get through yesterday. Things are dire, but life goes on - just. There are a few reasons why the country has not descended into full Mad Max mode.

There is a diaspora of 7+million Zimbabweans living and working abroad who remit a sizeable portion of their earnings in order to keep their relatives in Zimbabwe alive. A lot of this comes in via the 'shadow banking' system in order to keep Captain Bobs hands off of it.

An extensive black market economy, involving smuggled goods, which runs on US dollars and South African Rand.

Zimbabweans are an absurdly tolerant people. Too tolerant. Many other countries would have descended into riots and revolution before now under similar circumstances.

[kam3Oen]

Zimbabweans are an absurdly tolerant people.

Too bad the rest of the world couldn't tolerate them living under white rule. I wonder if a white ruled Rhodesia would be facing this situation. Yah, I wonder.

[wisconsin_cur]

The suffering gains speed?

The signs are all around. In the spectre of cholera haunting the sewage-strewn streets of Harare's townships. In the fading bodies of the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans surviving on wild fruits because their fields are barren. In the glass littering streets after embittered soldiers smashed their way into shops that no longer accept Zimbabwe's near worthless currency as the inflation rate surged through the billions and trillions.

But perhaps nothing is as disturbing a symbol of the collapse of governance in Zimbabwe as the ghostly corridors of the country's biggest hospital as patients are turned away from its doors to die.

Parirenyatwa hospital lies at the centre of a complex of hospitals in the heart of Harare with 5,000 beds. It is named after the first black Zimbabwean to qualify as a doctor, Tichafa Parirenyatwa, and was once one of Africa's best with a large maternity hospital, a section specialising in eye surgery and extensive paediatric wards.

Treatment was free. Zimbabwe's doctors and nurses were well trained and renowned for their dedication.

Today the Parirenyatwa's wards have an air of hurried abandonment. Get well soon cards are still pinned above the beds. Patients' notes hang below. The paediatric wards are decorated with mobiles of dancing animals and biblical drawings. But the absence of children creates a disquieting sense of abnormality.

Water from a burst pipe drops through a ceiling in a darkened corridor and forms a small lake in the general surgery ward. There is no one to repair it or, apparently, even report it.

The outpatient section's doors are locked. The operating theatres are darkened. The nurses' stations around them are abandoned. "A month ago this was overflowing with patients being wheeled in and out of the theatres. Now it is dead," said one of the few doctors still on duty, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution for criticising the authorities.

"The staff just stopped coming to work because it was impossible to work and their pay simply isn't worth anything. Nurses earned less than the bus fare to get here. We've been subsidising the government for so long now. The nurses feel abused, misused.

Link

Families in a once agriculturally rich land are living – and dying – on a diet of nuts and berries as food shortages threaten up to five million Zimbabweans. Our correspondent reports from western Zimbabwe on a gathering humanitarian crisis

[MrBill]

Don't worry, Cur, economics is not a science, so their economic pain and suffering is just an illusion. In reality, Mr. Mugabe is doing an excellent job of ignoring The Washington Consensus and the economic advice of The World Bank and the IMF. Thank goodness for the sake of the people of Zimbabwe.

[Ferretlover]

BanKi-Moon: Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic "far from over"

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday warned that the worst cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe's history was "far from over", as UN agencies are appealing for more funds and efforts to tackle the crisis.
Media reports have quoted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe assaying that the outbreak, which the UN World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed has led to nearly 800 deaths, was under control. …
WHO said Friday that the current cholera outbreak, an acute intestinal infection caused by contaminated food or water, was the most serious ever registered in Zimbabwe, with some 16,700 cases so far.
WHO is now seeking 6 million U.S. dollars to control the outbreak, which has also spread to neighboring South Africa. There have been about 750 cases and 11 deaths so far in South Africa. …

China View

[MrBill]

i have a feeling that 1000, maybe 2000 years ago, Africa was a much more peaceful & productive place

As recently as 2000 or so, Zimbabwe was considered the "bread basket" of Africa. They were a net food exporter to the other African nations. Somewhere along the line, they hit Peak Food Exports and went into terminal decline ...

Peak Food Exports? Please, I do not want to be rude, but what the F___ are you talking about?

shakes his head and wonders if a connection to the internet means every arsch has to have an opinion worth posting

[eastbay]

i have a feeling that 1000, maybe 2000 years ago, Africa was a much more peaceful & productive place

As recently as 2000 or so, Zimbabwe was considered the "bread basket" of Africa. They were a net food exporter to the other African nations. Somewhere along the line, they hit Peak Food Exports and went into terminal decline ...

Peak Food Exports? Please, I do not want to be rude, but what the F___ are you talking about?
shakes his head and wonders if a connection to the internet means every arsch has to have an opinion worth posting

You are one excitable boy today, aren't you MrBill? Lowem was clearly just messing with us. Like 'joking'.

Everyone knows Africas didn't know what a 'nation' was until some representatives from a few of them began trading with them. And they didn't export anything because they had no ships... or wheeled transport. Nearly all the food they ate was eaten within a small number of steps from where it was picked.

[wisconsin_cur]

Survival = Scavenging

NZVERE, Zimbabwe — Along a road in Matabeleland, barefoot children stuff their pockets with corn kernels that have blown off a truck as if the brownish bits, good only for animal feed in normal times, were gold coins.

Zimbabwean children picked up corn that had spilled from a truck on a recent Sunday along a road south of the capital, Harare.

In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.

And on the tiny farms here in the region of Mashonaland, once a breadbasket for all of southern Africa, destitute villagers pull the shells off wriggling crickets and beetles, then toss what is left in a hot pan. “If you get that, you have a meal,” said Standford Nhira, a spectrally thin farmer whose rib cage is etched on his chest and whose socks have collapsed around his sticklike ankles.

Merged.-FL

[Ferretlover]

Poor Zimbabwe! It's quite shocking how little they have, and what they have to resort to just to keep on keeping on.

[3aidlillahi]

In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.

Zimbabwe's population crisis is getting solved at least.

So long to the breadbasket of Africa. Amazing that they used to export food.

[vtsnowedin]

I choose not to take a couple of cheap shots that come to mind as they have been over used. Instead consider that what has changed Zimbabwe from a food exporting nation to a famine center is bad government and nothing else. Any country no matter how rich in resourses can be brought this low if its government is bad enough. We complain mightily about our own governments and how bad they have screwed things up but viewed from the hands and knees position of a field gleaner in Africa we are well off indeed. I don't know as anything can be done to help them but we need to pay attention to our own affairs so we don't join them on the road side.

[3aidlillahi]

I don't know as anything can be done to help them but we need to pay attention to our own affairs so we don't join them on the road side.

Good point. It's a good thing that so many on here weren't duped by a man who pledged more food to fuel programs. Oh wait...He was elected.

[vtsnowedin]

I don't know as anything can be done to help them but we need to pay attention to our own affairs so we don't join them on the road side.

Good point. It's a good thing that so many on here weren't duped by a man who pledged more food to fuel programs. Oh wait...He was elected.

And one of his first moves was place an Iowan in charge of the Dept. of Agriculture which means he is running in 2012 and plans to win the Iowa caucases. If this pragmatism holds up he may do allright. Just have to wait and see.

[wisconsin_cur]

We all have a "margin" of safety from bad government and other pressures on well being determined by a myriad of environmental factors.

As we saw with the Bush response to Katrina, that margin can be much lower than we perceive.

I hope that what people take away from what they learn about peak oil is to increase their own personal margins according to their own assessment of the most significant risks around them.