Monday, July 2, 2007

Catholic Archbishop in Zimbabwe Calls For Invasion of His Own Country

If you don't know about Robert Mugabe and what he has done to Zimbabwe, check it out.

It really gets my attention when a Catholic Archbishop says "We should do it ourselves but there’s too much fear. I’m ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready."

Some facts on Mugabe's Zimbabwe:

The annual inflation rate is simply astounding--reports differ, but the true rate is somewhere between 2,000% and 15,000%. Zimbabwe's inflation rate was just 7% in 1980, the year Mugabe took over. In the United States, 4% is considered pretty bad.

Female life expectancy has fallen from 63 to 34 in ten years. Male life expectancy is 37.

Agricultural output has fallen almost 90%. Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa. It now cannot grow enough food to feed its own population.

So many people are dying in Zimbabwe from AIDS, starvation, and other preventable causes that the population is estimated to have declined by 4,000,000 since 2002, leaving only about 8,000,000 people left. I should note that a lot of the population decline may come from the mass exodus of men from Zimbabwe, many of whom head to South Africa. But, for as much as anecdotal evidence is worth, the rate of HIV infection in Zimbabwe's army is around 90%.

Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by half since 1999.

Infant mortality is around 12%.

Unbelievable. What are we to do in light of such suffering?

No comments: