My most recent Fortune article on Zimbabwe has been on the newsstands for a couple of weeks, but it's not online yet. The short version: if Robert Mugabe stays in power and continues to thoroughly ruin the economy, he'll eventually run out of money to pay his security forces (the only thing standing between Zimbabwe and official failed state status) and may find himself in a position familiar to the people he has oppressed--cowering in terror at the barrel of a gun, being issued demands he cannot possibly meet.
An excerpt:
A passage from The State of Africa by Martin Meredith, recalls the explanation offered to citizens for cutting off their food supplies [during the Matabeleland conflict]: "First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children, and finally you will eat the dissidents." But most of the dissidents left the country before anyone could stick a fork in them... That Mugabe has any resources left to plunder at all is a function of what is increasingly a remittance economy.
"The World's Worst Inflation" [Fortune]
UPDATE: It's online now. You can read it here.
See also Peter Godwin's excellent piece in Vanity Fair this month.
Posted by Elizabeth Spiers at August 13, 2008 1:46 PM