ON THE ROAD TO SERFDOM IN AFRICA: MORE STATE-SANCTIONED LOOTING IN ZIMBABWE

Mugabe - who's doing to Zimbabwe what Castro did to Cuba: destroying it - is stepping up his planned takeover of the mining industry:

President Robert Mugabe has already presided over a grab of white-owned farms without compensation -- not to help rural peasants but to hand over assets to his supporters. Those farms are not being run efficiently as they were by their white owners. A kleptocratic government that inherited a country once seen as the southern African region’s bread basket is now responding to the fact that the state-owned granaries have less than a couple of weeks’ stocks of wheat by putting the army on high alert as a precaution against food riots.

Non-agricultural industry, too, is all but moribund as private-sector firms close down because of the chronic shortages of raw materials and foreign currency that the Mugabe regime has inflicted on them. ... Now, the Zimbabwean mining industry is facing the threat of expropriation. Mugabe’s cronies want an immediate handover of 25% of all mines to be followed by a further 26% by the year 2009. Sure, the 26% will be paid for, but payment will be in virtually worthless Zimbabwean dollars ... Effectively, then, this is confiscation. And will Mugabe’s looters stop there?

RTWT. (Allende would've done this to Chile.)