World Affairs

Welcome to this edition of World Affairs. In this issue we have one informative article by R Anderson which breaks down the current messy situation occurring in Zimbabwe. Read on to find out more about the unfortunate situation that the African nation has gotten itself into.

- R Anderson

Zimbabwe - By: R Anderson

Zimbabwe is a mess. The life expectancy is well below the international average because of the rampant presence of AIDS and HIV with the average person knowing little about the actual causes of the disease. In the recent past Zimbabwe's economy has been virtually destroyed, with such rampant inflation that economists have had trouble pinning the number down but it's estimated at greater than 200,000,000%. Amid all the problems that Zimbabwe is experiencing there is a power struggle for president. Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country since 1980 was defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of elections in March. However neither achieved the necessary majority to win the election, so it came to a run-off between these two candidates. This run-off was supposed to occur in June, however following the announcement of the results of the March election the time running up to the second election was marred by serious violence between Mugabe's political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and Tsvangirai's party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This violence escalated to the point that one week before the election was scheduled to be held, Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the election, in fear that his supporters would be killed if they tried to vote for him. Both political parties tried to pin the blame on the other, but most institutions agree that it was the ZANU-PF who was the initial cause and the most aggressive faction in the political violence. The election still went on as expected but without Tsvangirai participating, even though his name was still on the ballot. As was to be expected Mugabe won easily 85.5% to 9.8%. However this election was met with uproar from many countries around the world as well as the citizens of Zimbabwe. This international pressure continued for several weeks with threats of sanctions against the already hurting Zimbabwean economy. Finally on September 15, Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed to work out a power sharing deal. However these talks broke down a month later when Mugabe was un-willing to give Tsvangirai any power over the military or the powerful cabinet positions. As of now, there is no solution to the political problems in Zimbabwe, and while all of this is happening, hundreds of thousands of people are suffering because of decades of failed economic policies and poor leadership.

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