Zimbabwe inflation hits new peak, $1 for 1,8 billion Z$s

Scotsman:

ZIMBABWE'S president, Robert Mugabe, was accused of using food as a weapon against millions of his own people yesterday, as his government moved to crush opposition in a presidential run-off vote.
Mr Mugabe yesterday banned all political rallies by his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, shedding all pretence of an even-handed election in three weeks.

It followed an even more pitiless decree 24 hours earlier, banning all aid groups from distributing food and other basic needs to Zimbabwe's deeply impoverished people.

Mugabe's government has accused aid agencies of favouring opposition supporters, or running political or human rights campaigns aimed at undermining him. His critics, including the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, claim Zimbabweans now have to show their voting cards to get food aid.

Accentuating yesterday's crisis, black market traders in the battered Zimbabwe dollar said it had fallen to a new low level – 1.8 billion to a single American dollar. Inflation had topped 450,000 per cent, with prices doubling every day.

The government last week banned CARE International, one of the world's three top aid agencies, from providing humanitarian aid in the country.

On Wednesday, social welfare minister Nicholas Goche extended the ban to all non-governmental organisations in a country where agriculture has collapsed, with unemployment well over 80 per cent.

More than four million Zimbabweans, or more than a third of the population, survive on food and other aid from humanitarian operations, according to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
...
The Zimbabwe government is demonstrating the impotence of international organizations and aid operations. In the mind of the thugocracy in charge, any food not coming from the government is lessening dependence on the government. That is the way liberals think.

It is a message of vote for Mugabe or starve. All of this for the pretense of legitimacy they will never have.

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