Group items tagged

4. Legislate the impossible

3. Crush dissent

6. Scare off foreigners

8. Ignore a deadly enemy

9. Commit genocide

10. Blame the imperialists

Mugabe will have the last word on Zimbabwe's fate. His cronies are clearly worried that if he clings to power indefinitely, the ruling party will sink with him. He is under pressure to choose a successor by the end of the year. But at seventy-nine, Mugabe may well decide to stick around, relying—though he would never admit it—on the United States and Britain to bail out his people with food aid.

For all their differences, Mugabe and Ian Smith share a basic misconception about power: they both fail to realize that a government cannot survive indefinitely when it advances the political and economic desires of the few at the expense of the many.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/12/how-to-kill-a-country/302845/

5. Teach hate

7. Invade a neighbor

How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe, now seventy-nine, who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction. Although many of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole his ten-step approach is more radical and more comprehensive than that of other despots. The Zimbabwe case offers some important insights. It illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an antidote to idiocy and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonization—limited Western influence on the continent and a reluctance by African leaders to criticize their own. And it offers a warning about how much damage one man can do, very quickly.

Although Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the planet, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to govern but to a minority rule as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare of citizens as its ignominious white predecessor. The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women.

06 November 2013

simple preventive measures exist to reduce the burden of disease from such risks, although systematic incorporation of such measures into policy has been more of a challenge.

"China has also improved, although less dramatically. Japan and South Korea, despite enormous private investment, have declined slightly.

Across the board, English language skills are improving in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). "This year, India and Russia have moved ahead of China, and Brazil is closing in fast," said Education First.

The school went on to say that their Index found the Middle East and North Africa to be the regions with the weakest English proficiency.