Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe's government looks due to step even deeper into international disrepute on Monday when the World Bank formally classifies it with the world's worst economic pariahs.
Zimbabwe will be accorded "non-accrual status" for failing to make any payment on its debt to the Bank for the last six months, said Rogier van den Brink, the bank's deputy representative in Zimbabwe.
It joins 11 other nations also in arrears to the World Bank for the last six months. They are Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Republic, Liberia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzogovina and Burma.
"These are the hard-case failures in every way," said a Western diplomat. "So you see what kind of neighbourhood Zimbabwe has moved into."
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| 'You see what kind of neighbourhood Zimbabwe has moved into' |
Van den Brink appeared also to endorse widespread local and international belief that the first step to resolve the country's desperate crisis is the end of Mugabe's 20-year dictatorship.
"Decisive action is needed," he said. "A wide cross-section of economists tend to agree that a successful political transition, as illustrated by restoration of law and order and a more pluralistic political dispensation, is a key to a successful economic stabilisation and recovery."
Van den Brink's remarks, in a paper issued here at the weekend, are regarded as starkly outspoken considering the usually cautious language used by the World Bank.
But it is seen as one of the most alarming illustrations yet of the enormous destruction inflicted by Mugabe on what until recently promised to be a shining exception to Africa's record of violence, poverty and economic collapse.
There was worse to come, added Van den Brink, saying the country is "in turmoil". Gross domestic product in 2001 will fall by as much as a staggering 10 percent and inflation may reach 120 percent.
| 'The country cannot afford Mugabe for one day longer' |
"This fragile situation could degenerate even further, with severe economic, social and political consequences to the country itself and to the (southern African) region," said the World Bank official.
Observers say Mugabe is under unprecedented pressure to step down as with each blow his reputation as the statesman who embraced whites after a seven-year war for black majority rule is turned to the embarrassing notoriety of a corrupt, violent and incompetent despot.
At the weekend, South Africa's former president, Nelson Mandela, heaped on the scorn when he told a South African newspaper: "I would have wished someone would talk to him and say, 'look, you have been in office 20 years, it's time to step down'."
Last week, the government appeared to have escaped by the skin of its teeth the effects of economic isolation by the world's most powerful nation when the United States congress put off voting on the controversial Zimbabwe Democracy Bill.
Passed by the US senate earlier this year to condemn Zimbabwe's bloody pre-election violence, the bill proposes to cut all economic aid to the Mugabe regime and to block all World Bank and International Monetary Fund support.
"It's just as good as saying it has collapsed," said Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations, Tichaona Jokonya, about the postponement in congress.
Not so, say diplomats in Harare. Congress is being dissolved before American elections next month and the bill will appear again on the new congress' order paper in January.
At the weekend, ordinary Zimbabweans' patience was put yet a further severe test when foreign currency reserves began to dry up and international oil companies shut off fuel supplies.
Some of the worst queues seen in the year grew outside Harare service stations as motorists waited for a few extra litres of petrol that has more than doubled in price in the last month.
But public rage against Mugabe became clear on Saturday in the deafening roar of support for Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
He told 25 000 supporters at the party's first birthday rally: "Time has come for action. The country cannot afford Mugabe for one day longer. What we would like to tell Mugabe is that, please, go peacefully. If you don't go peacefully, we will remove you violently."
The former trade union leader promised that the party's previous practice of calling one-day national strikes in protest against government misrule was over.
"We cannot wait until 2002," he said, referring to the next presidential elections. "This time we will not stop until he goes."
But from the Mugabe camp, there came only promises of more of the same.
"That man is great, we should be thankful that we have him as a leader," said Didymus Mutasa, a veteran member of the ruling Zanu-PF party's politburo, its top organ. "So far as I am concerned, Mugabe is our sole candidate for the 2002 election." - Sapa-DP
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