Saturday, July 28, 2007

Two Zimbabwes

Unlike a John Edwards fantasy, there really is a place where the haves oppress the have nots. The socialist paradise of Robert Mugabe:

The shelves in Zimbabwe's stores are bare, but in a leafy suburb of Harare it's a different story, Sebastien Berger reports

Robert Mugabe's local supermarket is unlike any other shop in Zimbabwe. Elsewhere there are gaping empty shelves where bread, butter, sugar, meat and the staple maize meal should be.

But at the Spar in the Borrowdale Brooke suburb of the capital Harare, close to the president's palatial hillside residence, almost anything is available, including focaccia bread, sun-dried tomatoes and cigars.

The difference typifies a nation where a small ruling elite enjoy lives of wealth and privilege, while the vast majority exist in grinding poverty and struggle simply to survive.

The president's local Spar is one of the few shops in the country with an undiminished supply of bread amid an economic and agricultural crisis that has seen inflation spiral to more than 4,500 per cent.


....Asked how the shop was able to stock bread when so few other merchants can obtain supplies - which they would have to sell at a crippling loss - an assistant laughed and said: "I don't know."

The supermarket's ownership may have something to do with it. The proprietor is Ray Kaukonde, the governor of Mashonaland East province. He is also a close lieutenant of Solomon Mujuru, a former army commander whose wife, Joyce, is one of Mr Mugabe's two vice-presidents. The clientele are similarly well-connected. Borrowdale Brooke is Harare's plushest suburb, full of mansions that are home to the highest-ranking comrades of Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, as well as to the country's richest businessmen.

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