Zimbabwe is named for the mysterious stone ruins of a lost African or Arab civilization, long gone but widely recalled for its stone bird carvings. Today the southern African land resembles not the resplendence of the lost kingdom but of the ruins of a country which did not have to turn out that way.

The once robust Zimbabwe economy is in freefall. Owing to the disastrous and vengeful land redistribution program, wanton corruption, and mismanagement an African breadbasket has been turned into a starkly empty basket case. Confiscation of white owned farms, forced relocation of 700,000 black city dwellers into wretched tribal areas, and political repression of the MDC opposition party has created a noxious environment.

Continuous political showdowns with Britain and the Commonwealth have kept the pot simmering. Mugabe has support from many African states and the non-aligned movement.

Now in the midst of 6,000 percent inflation, 80 percent unemployment, and the persistent blame-the-British game, Comrade Bob talks of nationalizing industries both domestic and multinational and arresting “business profiteers.” This rings of classic socialist jargon and a guarantee for deeper disaster. Since the so-called land reform program in 2000, the GDP has declined an almost unbelievable 40 percent!

To gauge the decline, look at the value of the national currency. London’s Financial Times states, at independence “When Mr. Mugabe took over as prime minister in April 1980, the Zimbabwe dollar stood at US$1.50. Today at the official exchange rate (Z$250 to the US dollar) it is worth less than half a cent, while at the much more realistic parallel rate of Z$100,000 to the dollar it is all but worthless.”

Zimbabwe’s population is in freefall too. Officially the country has a population of 12 million but with a life expectancy for men at 37 years and 34 years for women, among the lowest in the world. Meantime over the past few years a minimum of three million people fled to neighboring South Africa; at least 3,000 people a day enter South Africa illegally. About 1,000 are caught and sent back daily. This exodus is both crippling to Zimbabwe and destabilizing regionally.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo Pius Ncube, a longtime regime critic, has urged Zimbabweans not to be intimidated by President Mugabe.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, decried the spiral of events in Zimbabwe, as “intolerable and unsustainable.” Efforts to bring the case to the UN Security Council have fallen on fallow ground.

Ruining Zimbabwe’s agricultural horn of plenty is a bit akin like turning Kansas and Nebraska into corn and wheat importers or taking Ukraine (as the Soviets did) from a farm exporter into a land of famine. The UN World Food Program estimates that a third of the population, about four million people needs food aid. A regional drought has cruelly compounded the crisis.

The chaos in Zimbabwe has severe regional implications; first and foremost the food shortages threaten the inhabitants and to turn this ex-British colony Rhodesia into another failed state. Second, the agricultural shortfalls affect exports to neighboring states, especially Zambia and Mozambique who depended on Zimbabwe farms. Third, Zimbabwe’s political and economic instability impacts on South Africa and Botswana.

In a misguided spirit of “African solidarity,” neighboring states, especially South Africa, have not seriously pressured the Mugabe regime into political decompression. The fallout from the ongoing humanitarian crisis has not reached high water mark and will soon spill over the African sub-continent. Before the worst, the United States and the European Union major humanitarian donors, should equally use their political clout to avert a wider crisis in the making.