On a recent trip to my home country, I was amazed at how things on the surface appeared so normal, life so laid back, people so optimistic. All this in a country with the highest inflation rate in the world, estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be an incomprehensible 150,000 percent, and where virtually all consumer goods are in short supply. A country where, for the seventh year running, a political and economic crisis continues to erode incomes, inhibit free expression and force citizens to flee abroad in droves.
In the small border town of Beitbridge near South Africa, evidence abounds of a state whose existence is both ubiquitous and nonexistent. Around the clock, armed policemen, soldiers and intelligence operatives patrol the streets and jostle for commodities in shops with ordinary citizens, who seem to hardly notice their presence. But they are a chilling reminder of a muscular, brutal state. When called into action, these armed men and women break up anti-government demonstrations with ruthless efficiency. Zimbabweans know that.
At the same time, the countless potholes in the streets, the scavenging stray animals, the empty shops and the general state of decay make you wonder if anybody's in charge. The state in Zimbabwe today has the dual identity of being too strong to die but too weak to rescue the country from crippling despair.
President Robert Mugabe, who just turned 84, has been ruling Zimbabwe since 1980 and will stand for re-election on March 29. If he wins, as expected, the country will continue its downward spiral.
Following decades of state repression and the rigging of elections since 2000, the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change goes into this year's elections enfeebled. Its leaders have been jailed frequently and harassed continually, and the Mugabe regime has effectively convinced rural voters, the majority, that the opposition's free-market economic policies and ties to Western governments are neo-colonial and unpatriotic.
Mr. Mugabe and his ruling elites, supported by the state-owned media, argue that the economic crisis is a creation of the West, particularly Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial master. They say the West was unwilling to accept Mr. Mugabe's 2000 decision to forcibly take white-owned farmland and give it to blacks. The regime saw this as a way to address a historical injustice while claiming that the West sought to use the resulting economic turmoil to effect "regime change" and "re-colonize" the country.
So far, this sales pitch has been quite persuasive not only to rural voters but also to the rest of Africa. African leaders have supported Mr. Mugabe and seized every opportunity to stave off international condemnation of his government.
Colonial memories remain fresh on the continent, where inequalities created by European governments and inherited at independence are still a feature of daily life. The failure of most African leaders to reduce poverty is often blamed -- justifiably in some cases and unjustifiably in others -- on the continent's colonial legacy and the present-day monetary and development policies of the IMF and the World Bank. In this context, Mr. Mugabe has been able to frame the crisis of Zimbabwe as yet another Western strategy to subjugate Africa.
Of course, this characterization glosses over the role of Zimbabwe's ruling elite in creating and exacerbating the country's descent from the bread basket of Africa to a basket case. At the core of the disaster is an exhausted nationalist and despotic regime that governs by creating ad hoc structures to manage the crises within a crisis that frequently arise. The normal state bureaucracy has been replaced by crisis "commissions" and military-style "operations," complete with code names. Even the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe routinely launches "operations" ostensibly aimed at restoring the country's economic health. None has worked.
During my stay in the capital of Harare, I witnessed the failure of "Operation Sunrise 2," which attempted to address crippling cash shortages by printing "bearer checks" of huge denominations. In January, the Reserve Bank issued a $10 million note, which is worth about US$4 and isn't enough to buy a hamburger.
Because the Zimbabwe currency loses value so rapidly, few people keep their money in banks. In fact, Operation Sunrise 2 failed after the Reserve Bank raided its own vaults and disbursed tons of currency in the popular and illegal black market, where it purchases hard currency to cover the country's balance of trade payments. Several operations aimed at halting foreign currency trading on the black market have failed because this has become the most reliable way to get hard currency that can hold its value for more than a day.
Likewise, operations to fight corruption, to increase food production and to stop illegal diamond mining and gold smuggling have been dismal failures -- mainly because ruling party cronies are involved.
In the face of even more uncertain times ahead, it appears as though the ruling elites in Zimbabwe have embarked on a systematic looting spree. Nowhere is this clearer than in the dual pricing of petrol and in access to hard currency.
Ordinary motorists purchase fuel at the market rate of more than US$1 per liter, while ruling politicians, who have access to the state oil company, purchase petrol at less than a dime per liter. While private companies and citizens can access hard currency only at astronomical black market rates, ruling party officials can buy it at ridiculously low prices through the Reserve Bank. The bank prints more and more cash to purchase hard currency at the same outrageous black market rates, then provides it to politicians at deeply discounted prices.
Except for Mr. Mugabe's cronies, life in Zimbabwe now is an existential struggle. Professionals go to work only to avoid getting fired for absenteeism; to survive they spend most of their days out of the office buying and selling anything that may be in short supply -- which means almost everything.
With the unemployment rate at 85 percent, a good education is no longer a ticket to a better life. In my rural home town of Mwenezi, the majority of young people abandon high school and trek down to South Africa to seek menial jobs, where they can make more money than teachers and other salaried professionals back home.
Throughout my most recent visit to Zimbabwe, the state radio channels played a jingle at 30-minute intervals that celebrated the country's sovereignty, lauded Mr. Mugabe's nationalist leadership and pronounced 2008 as a year of plenty.
When I was giving a lift to a teacher who doubles as a cross-border trader between Zimbabwe and South Africa, the jingle played just before we crossed into South Africa. She remarked nonchalantly: "It's all a big lie, of course. We know it, and they know that we know it."
The jingle ran its course, followed by a news bulletin that opened with: "The president and first secretary of Zanu PF, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe ... "