Most of the white farmers, as well as black commercial farmers, have been driven out of the county due to increased violence. According to the Vice President, “whites are not human beings.” But their “role was regarded as crucial to the economic welfare of Zimbabwe They accounted for three-quarters of the output of the agricultural industry....They grew 90 percent of marketed maize, the main staple; 90 percent of cotton, the main industrial crop; and virtually all tobacco and other export crops, including wheat, coffee, tea, and sugar, accounting in all for one-third of total exports” (Mugabe, 111). A country once known as the “breadbasket of Africa” is now starving and totally dependent on foreign aid to survive.
Zimbabwe's children now.
Zimbabwe in better times--1984.The forced exodus of the farmers has caused the economy of Zimbabwe to all but collapse. Inflation rose to an unbelievable 231 million percent—the world’s highest—before the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped in favor of the US dollar. Inflation has now decreased 3% since the implementation of the US dollar as the main currency.
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