Is there hope for Zimbabwe?

On May 15, Zimbabwe printed its first $500 million bill. The 500 million Zimbabwean dollar banknote is worth roughly $2 USD. Zimbabwe has suffered from consistent, rampant inflation in the past several years; the current inflation rate is 165,000 percent, meaning prices double once a week.

The president, Robert Mugabe, has been in office since 1987. Now, after more than 20 years of mismanagement, Mugabe’s economic woes and poor policymaking have finally caught up to him.

But is there anything left of Zimbabwe to salvage, and can it be salvaged in time?

Mugabe was a freedom fighter for Zimbabwe when it gained its independence from British rule. Ian Smith, leader of the white-minority Rhodesian government that ruled Zimbabwe after its independence from Britain, fought a prolonged, bloody war with Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). For his success in obtaining independence, Mugabe was a national hero and the ZANU-PF has ruled the country since its independence.

But two decades after independence, little had changed the black and white tensions in the country since the victory of the ZANU-PF. Land, for example, was still consolidated in the hands of white farmers. Mugabe thus began his infamous land reforms. With eroding black support for the 2000 parliamentary elections, he began implementing land reform to secure more black support.

The land reform was a desperately needed change for Zimbabwe, where most black farmers were still disenfranchised. However, the execution of the land reform was chaotic, and production has never recovered. After encouraging black Zimbabweans to seize and destroy white farms, large-scale commercial farming and agricultural exports that used to be the country’s leading sector collapsed.

Food shortages and rampant inflation immediately followed. Since the 2000 elections, things have not improved for Zimbabwe. Repeatedly abusing his power, Mugabe used political violence and unfair election tactics to secure victories in both the 2002 presidential election and the 2005 parliamentary election. The lack of a cohesive opposition party has also allowed Mugabe to manipulate food aid for political advantage.

However, the March 2008 presidential elections concluded in a haze with no declared winner. After obstructing the outcome of the election for months, Mugabe announced in May that the elections had not produced a winner. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDc) Party, beat Mugabe in the presidential election but did not obtain the majority vote needed. A runoff has been scheduled, but Mugabe’s government repeatedly postponed the date in a bid to stay in office longer.

After years of economic mismanagement, uncontrollable inflation and a president that is banned from travel to the United States and Europe, Zimbabweans sought change through elections. But the standoff between Tsvangirai and Mugabe has been fierce, with political scare tactics hindering the possibility of a free and fair election runoff.

Even if MDC and Tsvangirai win the runoff, the possibility of turning around Zimbabwe’s economic woes is exceedingly slim. When inflation reaches such unbelievable highs and new currency in new denominations must be constantly produced to keep up with the inflation, the hope of restoring order and faith in the market becomes illusory.

Whoever wins the runoff in the coming months clearly has an enormous mountain of change to implement.