Zimbabwe is a land blessed by nature. In 1980, the Jewel of Africa was also the breadbasket of Africa, possessing abundant human and natural resources, a beautiful climate, the best education and medical system on the continent. As independence began, it also had a popular international leader in the freshly elected Robert Mugabe.
Now that nation is a basketcase. Total wheat production over the past nine years was 313,000 metric tons. Compare this to the production for only a single year, 1990, when it produced over 325,000 metric tons.
The food instability of the past decade has occurred with, and is affected by, the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy and health system. Epidemics of cholera, AIDS and tuberculosis are virtually unchecked. Zimbabwe now has one of the world’s lowest life expectancies, falling from 62 years in 1990 to below 36 years at present. Biodiversity is also under extreme pressure, with over 330,000 hectares of forest refuge lost annually.
In short, Zimbabwe is a disaster zone. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said of President Mugabe in 2008, “He has destroyed a wonderful country.”
Not that Mugabe wants to take credit for this. For the longest time, he blamed every woe on “imperialist interference” or the IMF. But today, perhaps encouraged by its appearance in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si, the Jesuit-educated Mugabe has found a fresh villain in global warming.
“Disaster stalks our planet Earth,” Mugabe said last December at the Paris U.N. Climate Summit. “Not only are developed countries miserly in providing the means of implementation for the convention, they also want to inordinately burden us with cleaning up the mess they have created.”
A government-owned Zimbabwe newspaper recently noted that global warming reparations of $1.5 billion a year would go a long way to repair damage from droughts.
Mugabe blames the drought for the current crisis. Yet even without drought, Zimbabwe has had famine conditions in nine of the last 16 years. Drought merely exacerbates the effects of Mugabe’s disastrous policies.
In 2000, his Land Reform Programme (LRP), seized and redistributed productive farms based exclusively on the owner’s ethnicity. By 2002, wheat production collapsed to half its normal output after unruly, violent land grabs paralyzed the commercial farming sector. By 2008, annual output had dropped to 38,000 tons.
Government-sponsored looting of formerly productive farms has not just left them lying fallow. It has also exacerbated environmental problems. Newly minted farmers, with no experience of managing commercial farms, are clearing forests for firewood to cure tobacco crops. The further destruction of forests for fuel is exacerbated still further by the Mugabe regime’s failure to invest in electrical generation and maintenance.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) just released a report identifying a causal chain linking Mugabe’s economic policies to Zimbabwe’s economic ruin, food insecurity and malnutrition and the recent outbreaks of infectious disease.
Mugabe has paid no heed to international concern for the unfolding Zimbabwean humanitarian disaster. He has at every turn derailed international efforts to help.
In 2005 he said, “We are not hungry … Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked. We have enough.” He said this at a time over 1.5 million Zimbabweans were starving.
Mugabe is singlehandedly turning Zimbabwe into a desert. His efforts to blame global warming for his woes are the cynical ploy of a man who never takes responsibility for anything.
Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state, just celebrated his 92nd birthday with yet another million-dollar party. Even as his countrymen starve, Mugabe has never spared any expense on himself. After all, it is a great burden he bears, trying to save the planet from global warming.
James Wanliss, Ph.D., is Professor of Physics at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. He is a senior fellow and contributing writer for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and author of Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed physics articles, has held the NSF CAREER award, and does research in space science and nonlinear dynamical systems under grants from NASA and NSF. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
