Zimbabwe President to Move Toward Nationalizing Foreign Firms

And Jeffrey Herbst, provost and professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio, he taught at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare during the late 1980s, a time of relative prosperity in the country.

And, Professor, today Robert Mugabe presided over the ceremonial opening of parliament. He didn't have a lot to say about the economic problems, but he did concede that they did exist. He promised to cut and continue to freeze prices but didn't talk about why a country that once was a net exporter of food has bare shelves. Why?

JEFFREY HERBST, Miami University in Ohio: That's correct. Instead, he tried to blame Zimbabwe's economic problems on foreigners, as he has done for a good part of the past decade. He knows if he would concentrate too much on the country's economic problems that the blame would rebound only on him.

RAY SUAREZ: Akwe Amosu, they have confirmed that this current price regime is going to continue. How does a country with roughly 10 million people in it enforce something like store-level pricing, shelf-level pricing?

AKWE AMOSU, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Institute: Well, it uses its military muscles, its security forces to go out there and enforce the prices that it thinks are appropriate. And I think we've seen something like 4,000 retailers and members of the private sector, manufacturers, who are perceived by the regime to have been responsible for raising prices illegitimately being detained and being given fines and punishment for that "crime," so-called.

RAY SUAREZ: But when you've got inflation running in the thousands of percent, are there people who are just shutting their gates rather than selling at less than they paid for the goods?

AKWE AMOSU: Yes, I mean, obviously, until now, the retailers have been trying to keep pace so that they have to pay more and more for their goods, and then they charge more and more in their shops, but when they are told, "You have to cut those prices by 50 percent," then how they are supposed to go and restock is anybody's guess. And, in fact, as you say, as we saw in that report, several of the shelves in these shops are empty because they cannot restock. They can't afford to do so.

JEFFREY HERBST: Well, Robert Mugabe has repeatedly blamed Tony Blair, and the United Kingdom in particular, for the very mild sanctions that Western countries have imposed on the country. In fact, those sanctions have played really no role in the country's self-destruction.

RAY SUAREZ: So this is just a rationalization, in your view?

JEFFREY HERBST: It's a rationalization, but a good part of Zimbabwe's conflict and self-destruction is racially motivated, Robert Mugabe attempting, now succeeding, in destroying the white agrarian class. And the code for foreign powers in Zimbabwe is also the white Western world, which he believes is trying to keep him from completing what he sees as the Zimbabwean revolution.

RAY SUAREZ: Akwe Amosu, does that go down any longer now that farmers, as the professor mentioned, have been pretty much put out of business, the white industrialists are all but gone, and the small white population has dwindled almost to nothing? Can you really blame whites in Zimbabwe for what's going on? Are people looking inward and saying, "Who's doing this to us"?

AKWE AMOSU: There has always been, all the way through this period, there has been an active and articulate opposition that has clearly stated that it believed the problems to start in the government. And if you look back over the years, you'll see that the ZANU-PF government, Robert Mugabe's government, has consistently applied policies to try and silence those critics.

So I wouldn't say it's true to say that people have been completely hoodwinked by this attempt to paint the outside world, the Western imperialists, as the sole party responsible for Zimbabwe's problems. There's always been a clear and strong critique coming from inside the country. And that's why you saw, for example, the clearing of hundreds of thousands of people who lived in the urban areas out of those areas, sent into the rural areas, because they had been voting for the opposition, and President Mugabe didn't want that to happen anymore.

AKWE AMOSU: I think you go back and look at the security forces. The government has been extremely savvy and smart about making sure that security forces, the police, the military, the youth militias whom he's recruited have been always paid a little bit more and looked after a little bit better than the rest of the population. And that matters in today's Zimbabwe a great deal. And, therefore, he has had a cadre of people who are willing to enforce his will.

We are looking at 5,000 percent inflation and pretty much an economic implosion in Zimbabwe. It is an open question how long he can go on rewarding those people to do his bidding and assert his will. And I think, after that, what do you postulate as the real possibility that he won't have that support anymore?

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, is some of the support for Robert Mugabe coming from the neighbors? Do they aid him in remaining in power in Harare?

JEFFREY HERBST: I don't think they directly aid him; neither, however, have they been particularly strong in opposing him. The neighbors have been at times bewildered about what to do about Zimbabwe. They also resent foreign criticism of an African country, even if they hardly have sympathy with Zimbabwe.

And, also, some leaders and some of the populations in southern Africa, especially in South Africa, have some sympathy for what Mugabe has done to the white agrarian class in particular, even though they would not want similar actions taken in their own country.

RAY SUAREZ: Are they able to withstand the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of Zimbabwe? These are often some very poor countries bordering Zimbabwe.

JEFFREY HERBST: There are certainly probably between two and three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, many of them desperately poor, although there has also been an exodus of very highly trained accountants, actuarial school teachers, and many others who form the basis of the Zimbabwean economy to South Africa. The neighbors have suffered, but it is also something which they've been able to tolerate.