At the World Economic Forum on Africa in Durban on Thursday, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe bizarrely insisted his country is not poor or fragile, even though it chugs in at Number 25 on the U.N.’s Human Development Index for Africa.
There are 53 nations on the list, but everything after 18th-place Kenya is considered a zone of “low human development.”
“We are not a poor country and we can’t be a fragile country. I can call America fragile – they went on their knees to China,” said Mugabe. “Zimbabwe is the most highly developed country in Africa after South Africa.”
South Africa is, in fact, Number 9 on the U.N. index, far above Zimbabwe.
Mugabe went on to boast about his nation’s fourteen universities and its high literacy rate, as well as its abundant natural resources.
“We have more resources, perhaps more than the average country in the world. We have a bumper harvest, maize, tobacco, and other crops. We are not a poor country,” he said.
“Mr. Mugabe has presided over hyperinflation, soaring unemployment, and plummeting economic output during his 30-year grip,” Sky News observes. Incredibly, the 93-year-old authoritarian ruler, considered a dictator by many, is running for another term in office. He was first elected in 1980.
Mugabe has been in poor health for the past few years, prompting a string of health scares and frequent trips to Singapore for medical “reviews.” Zimbabweans grumble that his constant absences bring government operations to a halt, although it can still manage to arrest journalists who write unflattering reports about the president’s medical condition.
Not that the government works terribly well when Mugabe is around. “The once-prosperous Zimbabwe now has a cash crunch so severe that livestock in some cases is being accepted instead of currency,” notes the Associated Press.
More specifically, the Zimbabwean Education Ministry suggested last month that parents should be able to pay school tuition for their children using livestock. “If we had been told in 1970, ‘We are fighting to introduce cattle and goats as currency. Please help and die for this,’ what would we have said?” asked exasperated Zimbabwean filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Newsweek delivers some grim statistics about the economy: 21 percent of the population survives on less than $1.90 per day, trade unionists say the real unemployment rate approaches 90 percent (contrary to official figures of 11.3 percent), and a two-year drought has left 4 million people facing food shortages.
Opposition leaders say that Zimbabwe’s weak economy, cash shortages, and rising poverty levels make the country a “ticking time bomb.” Banks frequently put limits as low as $20 on the amount of cash depositors can withdraw and occasionally require customers to lug their withdrawals away as bags of heavy coin.
Newsweek caught one other comment from Mugabe that is bound to cause some controversy: He thanked God that at least Zimbabwe doesn’t have to deal with Islam.
“In the Islamic world, the belief is that the more violence you exert on the population, the more they listen,” he said. “In Africa you also had a touch of the Muslim world in some countries, but in the south it wasn’t our experience, thank God.”
Zimbabwe’s population is actually about 1 percent Muslim, and it has an Islamic Welfare Organization, which Newsweek notes has not yet responded to Mugabe’s comments.