Is Zimbabwe the worst country to live in?

Haiti or Tajikistan for sure. Both are miserable.

Kyrgyzstan is pretty bad too.

i'm to understand sierra leone is no picnic

How are they worse than Zimbabwe?

canada probably

I realize that there are many elements that determine a country's livability, and that there is no definitive way to declare one country the absolute worst. Interested in discussing it anyway.

what country has the worst bagels?

the ones where white rolls with a hole in them are passed off as bagels

ahh, so zimbabwe. i vote zimbabwe then.

i think that zimbabwe has probably passed somalia in the "worst shithole on the earth" contest.

burma, judging by rambo 4 and the recent weather!

the ones where white rolls with a hole in them are passed off as bagels

-- electricsound, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

california?

mission to zimbabwe ...

zimbabwe kitty ...

zimbabwe-shave

how's Chad doing?

If you're considering short-term contrast, Zim would have to be the worst. 15 years ago it was Africa's flagship, and even a few years ago it was worrying but still relatively well-off. This would be the hardest thing to experience.

north korea is not a nice place to live

Swaziland seems to be a contender as far as poverty and quality of life.

its got to be a place w/an all out war going on - theres not really anything worse

wait, wtf @ krgyzstan

a friend of mine has been there within the last five years and i heard no reports of god-awfulness. you would seriously put it up against zimbabwe or n. korea???

I have a very good friend from Zimbabwe, who is basically the most amazing person ever. Her family was pretty well-off, as these things go, but they finally gave up and moved to Iran.

It's kind of heartening that many of the countries that experienced truly horrible periods in the '90s and early '00s are beginning to turn things around a bit. Places like Liberia, D.R. of Congo, Rwanda, Chad, Sierra Leone, Somalia are all still grappling with political instability, ethnic tensions, desperate poverty, disease, etc., but the general trend is toward peace and economic recovery. I suppose it's easy to make progress when the starting point is so low, but it's still progress.

Zimbabwe is remarkable for it's movement in the opposite direction though. Sad.

Sudan is probably worse than Zimbabwe - well, it is if you live in the Darfur region.

Poll this.

No, everyone knows it's England. Deasn't anyone read the newspapers?

How is Congo doing these days? That was looking pretty desperate a few years ago. Zimbabwe does seem like it's the one most likely to get worse, but are we all so rockist that no one is going to say Iraq?

I suppose it's pretty relative. Congo has definitely had it's moments (ridiculous understatement) but I know someone there who confirms the official line that (at the very least) there is more stability, basic services, you can do business without having to pay soldiers/rebel troops and there is some effective government. So compared to say even a couple of years ago, things are looking up! Still some fighting though.

I ran into a few references to Somalia as the "ultimate failed state" in the past couple of days and it really made me intrigued - no central government since 1991, warring militias and civil war, total lawlessness, and a haven for pirates among other things. Would utter lawlessness be better or worse than a seriously oppressive central government?

Zimbabwe still has a Test cricket team. Not even the United States can claim to that, hey?

What is so bad about Tajikistan? A friend of mine just came back from there and had no serious horror stories. Admittedly she was lawyering out there so may not have come across anything truly horrendous but still...

26 countries rank below Zimbabwe if you use the UN's Human Development Index. Had no idea Tanzania ranked below Nigeria.

Zimbabwe also has a 90% adult literacy rate, one of the highest in Africa. So that's something.

I'm surprised by Tanzania being below Nigeria. I've always heard it is a bit weak on economic indicators, but does a lot better on touchy feely indicators, while Nigeria is straightforwardly rubbish.

You guys, it's clear: We need an ILX index to go by.

A Somalian friend of mine who traveled around Eastern and Southern Africa said that of the countries he visited, Mozambique was the most poor and depressing. He amusingly described South Africa as "just like America, with freeways and McDonalds everywhere".

niger is generally at or near the bottom of most indices, though there doesn't seem to be a hot war going on there at the moment.

yellowcake, though, eh?

I'm a bit curious why India would place 29 spots lower than Sri Lanka.

On which one?

HDI

The whole thing about wars being OMG bad in countries is maybe exaggerated... if you already have half the country dying of HIV you wouldn't notice a few more going in a war. And if your HIV death rates are low but have a little war going on, it would still make you better off than somewhere like Swaziland.

the HDI doesn't even bother to list Somalia

I think we must now spend all our time looking at the HDI rankings saying "wow, I was surprised by X being higher/lower than Y".

I am surprised that a relatively functional country like Ethiopia (albeit one with an authoritarian regime and a lot of people who might soon starve to death) is much much lower down that a Lolcountry like Equatorial Guinea.

OK, that HDI thing is a farce, there is no way Ireland is the fifth best country in the world, though I am willing to accept that we are better than suckass countries like the UK.

NIgeria has a lot of oil money and a good bit of remittance flowing in from nationals abroad, so that might explain a higher rating.

has anyone really figured out how this HDI thing is determined? I can't be bothered.

The Quality-of-life Index lists Ireland as number one, but on inspection some of it's criteria are completely insane.

*its

Hah, Australia third. Rightio.

US and British diplomats in Harare just massively hassled by police there, we await full-blown INCIDENT. Is Mugabe still UN-ing?

Expelled, I think.

He tends to rock up to everything anyway, despite hating everyone.

Ireland's #5. You mean Iceland?

I guess sulfur tolerance is a highly important human development factor!

When is the Icelandic Tuomas going to join ILX?

Tuomar Graðiklolson

The HDI I saw yesterday put Iceland at #1...

Zooming up rocky mudpits on mecha 4 x 4's on dried sharkfin high = apex of human development

JÁ

(Iceland is #1 on HDI. Ireland is #1 on the batshit Quality of Life Index).

Opposition rallies banned! (srsly, why is nobody stopping this Mugabe dude? Does Zimbabwe have oil or a strong AZPAC lobby group?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7440237.stm

Would be hilario if the MDC shat it in.

Not that Zanu-PF would allow those results to be published, but hey.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4116638.ece

Oh, my god.

woah i'm never messing with matt DC again

This comment is interesting:

The world like to have it both ways when it comes to asking America and the UN to intervene. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.. The truth is, the best solution is to assassinate Mugabe, and then move in quickly to change the regime. We should rethink the ban on assassinations.

Roger W., Seattle, WA, USA

which begs various questions:

what was the reasoning behind the ban on assassinations?

if it genuinely was lifted, would it make things better or worse?

I imagine the reasoning was that murder is wrong

it's ok to murder lots of innocent people at the same time but not one evil person in isolation. It all makes sense now.

it's just not cricket.

You might consider it murder but I'm sure they don't (xp)

Seconding gbx and Matt DC's questions about those Central Asian republics being as bad as the worst of eg Africa. (I know abt long nasty civil war in Tajikistan etc, but on a par with the worst faileds?)

but are we all so rockist that no one is going to say Iraq?

-- Matt DC, Wednesday, June 4, 2008 4:58 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

http://www.theotheriraq.com/ YAAAAAAAAAY!

Foreign Policy Magazine's Failed States Index 2007

lol id forgotten about 'the other iraq'

i loved how fox news was sincerely pimping that at the time

Mugabe's gotta be removed by any means nec. at this point, I'd say.

Uhm this entire thread is highly debatable. You could easily argue that France is the worst country to live in....I don't get your point. Do you mean in terms of immediate badness or like ongoing bad?

I don't have a point, I am asking a (very open-ended) question.

Also:

I realize that there are many elements that determine a country's livability, and that there is no definitive way to declare one country the absolute worst. Interested in discussing it anyway.

-- roxymuzak, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11:12 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

does zimbabwe have a taco bell? that would make it better than england

The argument for France being the worst country in the world to live in - how would that go exactly?

when their relationship go sour they can't fly off to paris for a romantic break to fix everything.

their football team got beaten by scotland home and away

Uhm this entire thread is highly debatable. You could easily argue that France is the worst country to live in....I don't get your point. Do you mean in terms of immediate badness or like ongoing bad?

-- VeronaInTheClub, Friday, June 13, 2008 12:35 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i think the point is that zimbabwe has overwhelming, crushing poverty, an oppressive, murderous dictatorship, very high level of AIDS infection, hardly any medical services, scarcity of food, random violence in every region, and the lowest life expectancy in the world. france has none of these things.

yeah but the french smell bad and are stuck up, so it's the worst place to live.

zimbabwe fries

ismael and and what otm. also, ken: england has a taco bell, it's in birmingham!

You have to ask yourself if Zimbabwe would actually be better off with Mugabe assassinated. The guy is evil and must go, but assassination would lead to even more bloodshed, I imagine.

when all of the countries have to do their book reports zimbabwe gets to go pretty much last... afhanistan has it rough in that regard

Ugh at going in and assassinating - have we learned nothing? And considering we have a global economic system that sets the conditions for this - its totally giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Dictators of this kind are as much a symptom as they are a cause

Plus you know there are those out there that would only be too happy to lump people like Evo Morales in same boat and do same there

Obviously Zimbabwe is completely shitty right now but in a broader sense, aren't most if not all countries pretty fucked up? We're all run by states/business so I'd say thats pretty apalling, mass exploitation, the rich and poor gap etc...there are plenty of reasons why Zimbabwe is an awful place to live but its not THE worst.

Oh and the argument for France being the worst place to live in?
Sweatshops, Nicolas Sarkozy, virulent racism on a far more overt scale within public bodies, being run by an authoritarian, hierarchial government thats trying to impose US style imperialism and capitalism, market sharing,labor laws...I mean....just because you happen to live in an economically better enviroment doesn't mean jack really. But you're right, there's no definitive guideline to what makes a country shit.

yeah, economies are meaningless, really!

lol

Economies are meaningless! Don't make me start whinging about capitalism...

that'd be GREAT.

youre on some noble savage shit for real if you think labor laws in france are worse than zimbabwe

I'm just saying is all, that you could make an argument for ANY place being the worst to live in. THAT is all I was trying to say.

Yes, you could make an argument for anything on earth, but many of these arguments would be retarded. THAT is all we were trying to say

Well...I want to push this and ask 'why that would be retarded' but I'll be outstaying my welcome

This isn't worth it, is it?

looks like someone hacked their netnanny

i want more!

about the only sense i can imagine thinking zimbabwe is a better country to live in than france would be if you were so pathologically attached to zimbabwe culture that being deprived of it and having to live in france would basically force you to kill yourself

the french have to put up with other countries making eyes at their president's special lady the whole time... no-one ever put naked pix of mrs mugabe on the web, is all im saying, so be thankful zimbabweans! you have your pride!

It's kind of true that there is no real difference between being a malnourished unemployed person with AIDS who lives in constant fear of mob violence and being a person who is forced to work a 40 hour week and pays more than they would like for petrol.

I mean WTF are you talking about?

don't worry supercub: economies do not exist

there is actually no such thing as "money"

i mean, it's just paper!

Can we not just DROP this? Your sarcasm is through the fucking roof now, I feel I've been grandly misconstrued.Economies ARE meaningless in the sense that all they do is provide another means for capitalism to go on, they aren't truly helping people if you sit down to examine them and don't work for the fucking Economist. Economies are a system of slavery they are meaningless in that sense but obviously in a literal way they aren't. Can we not leave this shit now? I'm tired of this hateration, I'd just like some fucking sleep.

^^is this luriqua

chill with the victimized shit you said zimbabwe was a nicer place to live than france & got hardsonned for it nobody hates you this is just ilx

xp, This seems like it might be Dom.

I'm not feeling victimised, I'm just a little drunk. Honestly. I'm sobering up now tho. Also NO I'm not this Dom person.

(haw haw @ "can we not just drop this!?" 20 hours later)

yeah, who is this cat!

Veron - I understand the basic premise of your argument, but you've taken it to such an extreme. Yeah inequality, exploitation, and human degradation are universal, but the severity and prevalence of these afflictions vary by country and locale, right? A minimum wage worker in an industrialized country may be exploited, but that person generally won't starve or die before age 50 from disease or violence. That person generally won't have to worry about government sponsored death squads or genocide. Right?

looks like someone hacked their netnanny

-- DG, Friday, June 13, 2008 1:59 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

lolz

arguing that france could be worse than zimbabwe is some straight dorm room contrarian bullshit.

darfur is basically no worse than long island

^^^true?

it is very sad to see that there are those who think it wise to be a prudent thing to not appreciate the fruits of ones freedom. seldom do people appreciate the positive qualities of being a westerner in this age. civilization is to be defended.

Zimbabwe: Government of National Unity Mooted Amid Increasing Violence

The upsurge in political violence in Zimbabwe, which has reportedly resulted in the murder of five opposition activists in the past 24 hours, is being attributed to attempts by the ruling ZANU-PF party to achieve the upper hand in deciding who will hold sway in the composition of a proposed government of national unity (GNU).

http://allafrica.com/stories/200806190982.html

lol open-source government

Congratulations to Mr. Mugabe on winning the second round of these elections with 109 % of the votes!

well he did give 110% effort.

Mugabe is one of those delusional meglomaniacs who has convinced himself that he's right OTM like Hugo Chavez....

As for the other things...OHMYGOD. Look, I just think its very easy to sit apart from the situation and in a very abstract way judge it then move on instead of looking for actual solutions or the root cause. Zimbabwe is a terrible place to live but when you start getting into comparisons then its easy to ignore the other atrocities its as if to say that this one place is fucked up so lets focus on that and then when somewhere else gets marginally shittier we'll get all excited about that. Its selective outrage which is what irritates me. I do not say for a second that someone living in Zimbabwe would turn their nose up at the idea of living in France atm but just that people shouldn't just agitate to free one system of oppression while others continue on basically unchecked because its not 'news' or its 'not their problem' and 'right now its not as bad'.
When I mentioned France it was in a really blase way AND as I've said all I meant was that you could argue that anywhere in the world is the worst place to live. Some are comparatively worse than others but historical examples or smaller scale examples of ugly situations in France or I don't know Jamaica can be used to prove that a place was particularly awful, I don't believe in singling out one as terrible then moving on for the next worthy cause of the day. I also don't think true freedom which doesn't infringe on anyone in a painful way or repress others for everyone everywhere is at all an extreme pov but those are my politics not yours and I accept that. Also no I don't fucking live in a dorm or with my parents.

That person generally won't have to worry about government sponsored death squads or genocide. Right?
Just because the violence from the government is not direct does not mean it doesn't happen, its a structural thing that still works in the same manner of aggression only by a different route. But thank you for at least trying to get my point.

it is very sad to see that there are those who think it wise to be a prudent thing to not appreciate the fruits of ones freedom. seldom do people appreciate the positive qualities of being a westerner in this age. civilization is to be defended
What? Also what do you mean by 'civilization'? I'd like some clarification because that to me is a suspect sentence.

Alright I'm done. I mean it this time.

Tsvangirai gives up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7467990.stm

He called on the global community to step in to prevent "genocide".

too busy with france :(

A win for the incumbent in an effectively uncontested second round? It's like Chirac 2002 all over again.

all I meant was that you could argue that anywhere in the world is the worst place to live.

and you'd still be wrong :-/

I seriously can't understand the psychology of power thirsty dictators. If I were Mugabe, I would take a large sum of the money I've pilfered from the country over the last few decades and move to a nearby country with assurances of a jail-free life. I'd live out my remaining days in a plush villa surrounded by servants and excessive luxury. Why not just cut your loses?

Because he's fucking mental?

yeah, the thing about dictators -- they're into power?

yes, indeed.

"Just because the violence from the government is not direct does not mean it doesn't happen, its a structural thing that still works in the same manner of aggression only by a different route."

could you spell this one out for the slow 'uns? i guess it's something like, "by disenfranchising young muslims, in a way the french state is sending groups of armed men to kill and rape political activists?" or, "by coddling its farmers, the french state is in a sense trying to starve opposition groups to death".

Hooray, the Security Council is going to condemn the situation and write a sternly worded resolution! Problem solved!

i wonder who's gonna win

Tesco

JUSTICE

OH MY GOD banriquit. I'm not getting involved again.

Ah fuck it.
Fine. Zimbabwe is the worst place to live in. RIGHT NOW. Where will the guilty liberal selective concern take us next though? It could be for example; France or Venezuela or Portugal or how about Somalia-where hey, the SAME THINGS ARE HAPPENING. What's going on in Zimbabwe is appalling I know that, I'd be an idiot not to I just disagreed with saying that simply because of people suddenly being far more alert to Mugabe's always, always dictatorial ways that Zimbabwe deserves to be treated like some massive blemish on the otherwise spotless earth. There are so many cases of state sponsored deaths happening right now in places like Columbia or women and children being raped and murdered in Darfur and even right here in the UK rape conviction rates are disturbingly low. Oh and speaking of western freedoms what about the bullshit deportation charges that Hicham Yezza a Nottingham student has been accused of? How about the racist immigration laws here that send literally hundreds of people seeking refuge from regimes which denounce their sexuality to their deaths? There are wide scale constantly evolving and worsening problems that need to be fixed and there is a root and cause that must be removed. How can you single out this one place today and later change focus?
Not enough is being done on an international solidarity scale, all that is being offered is either more militarism (because thats been known to lessen deaths) or useless palliatives I mean for fucks sake, is a removing a knighthood the best thing possible that England could do? I don't claim to have all the answers but I think its bullshit the way the crisis has been approached, this labeling really is counterproductive. Shouldn't the question be 'Why isn't enough being done about Zimbabwe? Or what can we do to help? and I'm sure there are people here who actually do act on such principles. Its great that more peoples eyes are being opened to the growing conflict in Zimbabwe but not when all it leads to is empty speculation.

yeah i basically agree w. a lot of that, it's just that it's still worse than france by a long shot! the reason zimbabwe gets concentrated on and somalia and the sudan get ignored (though this is relative: darfur was huge in '04) is that it's sort-of part of the anglosphere. and it's an easier story to tell.

I read this on those inane Have Your Say comments threads on the BBC website;

"Is not Mugabe's regime a bigger disaster? What has lowered life expectancy more, Aids or Mugabe? Why not remove him first and then Aids.

[Lambretta150], Wraxall, United Kingdom"

"Why not remove capitalism first, and then Mugabe will fix himself?"

^^^OTM
Also remove state power and other authoritarian structures etc but otm otherwise.

ehhhh, mugabe is pretty bad at capitalism.

Well its a solution

dude's bad at most things

must be good at something

dude can persecute

dude can genocide

How much of what we think is because of propaganda, I wonder?

I'm not going to defend Robbie here, but a coworker from Mozambique thought it was odd that the western way of thinking about him is so very different from (what he calls) the african view. There, a lot of people see him as the Zimbabwean version of Nelson Mandela (has been in jail simply for fighting against white Rhodesia). The difference? Mugabe happens to be in a country that's made up of black populations that haven't managed to work together the way the South-Africans have.

I don't know enough about Zimbabwe (or Africa, even) to reply to that - does it sound plausible or was this guy I was talking to playing the devil's advocate? (as soon as someone says something bad about any african government - Congo, mostly, we're in Belgium - he goes off about how it's because we miss white colonialism and don't think Africans can rule themselves, etc - avoiding to address the actual point we were talking about, it seems)

I don't know what to think, I'm just throwing what he said up in the air here. Have we been brainwashed (a lot of it is probably true and tragic, but it's not impossible for someone like Tsvengirai to know western sensibilities and how to exploit them - everything (Mugabe's tribe?) does is The Government's fault? Bit like the Sunni/Shiite thing in Iraq?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

"His relationship with the former colonial power, the United Kingdom, has been particularly contentious; he is described as a violent dictator in the British press, and he in turn denounces the British establishment as inveterate colonialists."

It's pretty clear he's trashed the country with segregationist policies and undermined a crucial election. btw the MDC is almost completely black, so it's not exactly waving the Ian Smith flag.

Also it may be reasonable to say he wanted majority race (i.e. blacks) running the farms since one percent (mainly whites) owned over 95 percent of all arable land, but he started reclaiming the farms nearly 10 years ago by installing people who knew bugger-all baout farming. Stupid at best, despotic at worst.

My impression is that liberation era leaders in Africa often use anti-colonial rhetoric to deflect criticism of their own failings. Most everyone acknowledges the need for land reform in Zimbabwe, but all indications are that Mugabe completely botched the process and showed wanton disregard for the welfare of his people. Combine that ineptitude and corruption with his thoroughly undemocratic ways, and you get the wide-ranging criticism.

It's certainly possible that that criticism involves hyperbole (see the genocide charge a few posts upthread), but who the hell would honestly defend this guy?

I said the genocide thing. True, he's not wiping out a race, so to speak, but he certainly wants all whites out of his country.

StanM, your friend sounds pretty badly informed.

There, a lot of people see him as the Zimbabwean version of Nelson Mandela (has been in jail simply for fighting against white Rhodesia).

i think this may have been true-ish for some people ten years ago, when mugabe started expropriating the white farmers, but even at that time rhodesia was ancient history. given that life expectancy in zimbabwe is under 40, not a whole lot of people there can remember living under ian smith.

(there's also a note of 'all leaders of former colonies look alike' in this argument, too.)

that said, there were lots of people in the west who supported mugabe occupying the farms on the grounds that the whites owning most of the land was tantamount to them running things generally. as super cub says, there is something in that.

but to say that

Mugabe happens to be in a country that's made up of black populations that haven't managed to work together the way the South-Africans have.

is glossing over to a ridiculous extent. i'm not really sure what it means.

cover of ny times today is striking, anyone see it?

banquirit, I'm totally not surprised about that - I just don't know how informed he really is or if he was just in his "whites be criticizing an African government again, so I'll defend it" (knowing we tend to believe him because he's from nearby) mode

what IS going on with his jackets, btw?

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44783000/jpg/_44783579_mugabe.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auFBqn5OfMI

lol love how the british labour leader morphs into a giant vadge and back again

nope, he's always a cunt*

*do you se what i did there

^^I SEE.
Hahaha excellent.

Photojournalist Flees Country Following Assault By Police, Confiscation of His Property

http://allafrica.com/stories/200808090153.html

Where did the power-sharing talks come from? Mugabe cheats again, Tsvangirai pulls out, Mugabe 'wins', the suddenly they're agreeing to share power?! WHAT HAPPENED??

This fucking guy.

what'd he do now?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iy7XWjxGgoYgfrH5HleAciLslSwg

President Robert Mugabe declared Friday that "Zimbabwe is mine" and vowed never to surrender to calls to step down, as his political rival threatened to quit stalled unity government talks.

Addressing his ZANU-PF party's annual conference amid a ruinous political crisis and a deadly cholera epidemic , Mugabe returned to the kind of defiance he has often shown in the face of mounting criticism.

"I will never, never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine, I am a Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe never for the British, Britain for the British," Mugabe told his party's annual conference.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/3850646/Zimbabwe-cholera-victims-die-of-thirst-as-bodies-pile-up.html

I'd give the nod to Somalia as the objectively worst contry to live in.

Lowest ranking countries by 2005 Human Development Index

Somalia 0.221 (last ranked in 1993)
Afghanistan 0.229 (last ranked in 1993)
Liberia 0.311 (last ranked in 1993)
Sierra Leone 0.336
Burkina Faso 0.370
Niger 0.374
Guinea-Bissau 0.374
Mali 0.380
Central African Republic 0.384
Mozambique 0.384
Chad 0.388
Ethiopia 0.406
Democratic Republic of the Congo[4] 0.411
Burundi 0.413
Côte d'Ivoire 0.432
Zambia 0.434
Benin 0.437
Malawi 0.437
Angola 0.446
Rwanda 0.452
Guinea 0.456
Tanzania 0.467
Nigeria 0.470
Eritrea 0.483
Senegal 0.499
Gambia 0.502
Uganda 0.505
Yemen 0.508
Togo 0.512
Zimbabwe 0.513
East Timor 0.514
Kiribati 0.515
Djibouti 0.516
Kenya 0.521
Sudan 0.526
Haiti 0.529

HDI is a joke, we covered this. It takes into account how many people go to church, for example.

"I don't know why America's getting so excited over electing a black president. Zimbabwe elected one years ago and he's a fucking twat."

lol

is that a Viz letter?

yeah

had all the hallmarks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7929136.stm

Hmmmm.

That was my reaction too.

a lorry? subtle, subtle stuff

interesting thread

Moldova deserves an honorable mention on this thread.

^^^^^this appears to have been an actual accident. hit by a truck carrying U.S. supplied antiretroviral AIDS medication. There must be irony here.

Are You Ashamed of Where You Live? [Started by MarkH in September 2001, last updated 11 minutes ago by Super Cub on I Love Everything] 62 new answers
Is Zimbabwe the worst country to live in? [Started by roxymuzak in June 2008, last updated 16 minutes ago by Super Cub on I Love Everything] 6 new answers

this is what I get for posting on a saturday

Blimey:

Josiah Tongogara, the revered Zanu guerrilla fighter who led the liberation war and had sharp differences with Mugabe about the direction that the country should take after 1980, died in a mysterious car accident on the eve of independence while travelling to Harare from Mozambique.

Among notable political figures to have died in suspicious crashes was Sydney Malunga, the Zanu-PF parliamentarian and celebrated critic of Mugabe, whose death in 1994 was blamed on his "driver trying to avoid a black dog" that had veered into the road.

Malunga's death preceded that of Chris Ushewokunze, the prominent industry and commerce minister, who was killed in a car crash in 1995.

Others who died in road accidents included Zanu-PF politicians Moven Mahachi, Border Gezi, Witness Rukarwa, William Ndangana, Elliot Manyika, Ntandazo Ngwenya and Zororo Duri. Many suspected they had been done away with because of bitter intra-party feuding.

Activist Christopher Giwa also had a suspicious crash and businessman Peter Pamire's car rolled in 1997 after widespread allegations that he was conducting an affair with Mugabe's young second wife, Grace.

Winston Changara, Mugabe's long-time bodyguard, also died in a crash after allegations that he was leaking information about the private activities of the First Lady.

http://www.capeargus.co.za/?fArticleId=4877990

Tsvangirai says crash an accident

Referring to his late wife, he said: "It was an accident and unfortunately it took her life."

Yup. "Unfortunate" definitely the right word to describe your wife's death. Spose he's just a "bigger picture" guy, right?

yeah what a dick huh

I mean, are you really calling out a dude for not fully expressing his grief over his wife's death in a public statement?

xposts. You are a douche.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7984293.stm

God, what a shit year he's having.

is it me or is this place stealthily cleaning up its act

n.b. I have no idea whether this is the case at ALL but the country's been eerily quiet for ages, makes me think things might be going better

solid reasoning

lol

they've been having some time out from the world, just thinking bout things

tsvangirai has been rehabilitated and mugabe's allowed him to co-own a women's american football franchise

some wite ppl who had their shit stolen have been rly chill abt it

it's all good basically

there was some stuff in the wikileaks the emphasized that it's difficult to see how the situation could change, which sounds about right. basically it's how it was when it was last news, LJ.

http://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/Mugabe-condemns-gay-filth-20110414

Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Thursday condemned gay "filth" in Europe, as he lambasted Western powers for maintaining their asset freeze and travel ban on him and his inner circle.

"We don't worry ourselves about the goings-on in Europe," he told thousands at the burial of deputy intelligence chief Menard Muzariri, who died on Monday.

"About the unnatural things happening there, where they turn man-to-man and woman-to-woman. We say, well, it's their country. If they want to call their country British Gaydom, it's up to them. That's not our culture. We condemn that filth.

"We get alarmed when these countries have the audacity to schedule us as an item to discuss in their parliament."

BRITISH GAYDOM

February 22, 2010(Reuters) - China said on Monday its embassy in Zimbabwe had thrown a birthday party for President Robert Mugabe, a rare sign of foreign support for a leader reviled by many Zimbabweans and criticized by the United States and Europe.

Mugabe celebrated his 86th birthday on Sunday and made time to attend a party held in his honor at the Chinese embassy in Harare, China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

china hearts bob

http://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/Zim-man-claims-prostitute-turned-to-donkey-20111026

Harare - A Zimbabwean man has told a court that he hired a prostitute who during the night transformed into a donkey, and that he is now "seriously in love" with the animal, state media said on Wednesday.

"I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey," Sunday Moyo told the court, according to The Herald newspaper.

What was he drinking?

the pride of my collection

http://i.minus.com/ibaI303O3bL3aO.JPG

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/24/postcards_from_hell_2014_fragile_states

zimbabwe only #11 this year