Affordable Housing Institute : US

The great tactical advantage of psychopathy is that it frees you from the shackles of truth, consistency, or human morality.  So Robert Mugabe, in rapid sequence with no regard to predecessor claims:

 

• Claimed that Operation Restore Order was a development program:

The UN’s special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, says that the recent demolition of urban homes and black-market shops, leaving some 700,000 people without shelter or livelihood, has created a humanitarian crisis.

 

• With wounded crocodile pride pointed to a vaporware rebuilding program scheduled to start in 2008 (or later)
• Invited Kofi Annan to Zimbabwe (date not set, of course; this is vaporware) even as he continued demolishing neighborhoods
• Promptly left his ravaged country to visit China on a shopping trip: 

This week in China he sealed a deal for economic and technical co-operation, though it is unclear how much actual cash that will provide.  What it may mean, however, is that China would veto a censorious resolution on Zimbabwe in the UN Security Council.

 

My full post, with pictures, can be found here, with an earlier post here.

 

Meanwhile, he’s heading south asking his good friend South African president Thabo Mbeki to spare him some more money:

 

South Africa, already reportedly owed some $50m for unpaid electricity, telecom and fuel bills, is pondering whether to lend cash to cover part of the $290m arrears that were due to be paid this week to the IMF.  President Thabo Mbeki has been berated in the West for his hitherto ineffective policy of “quiet diplomacy”.  But although African leaders across the continent are still loath to criticize Mr Mugabe in public, a shift may be taking place.  Mr Mbeki may insist that Mr Mugabe should not get a loan from South Africa unless he starts negotiating with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and imposes at least a semblance of economic discipline.

 

Mr. Mugabe has always been quick with the promises (psychopathy comes in handy again):

 

Even if conditions are made, it will be hard to ensure that Mr Mugabe meets them. Greg Mills of the Brenthurst Foundation, a South African think-tank, says that lending Mr Mugabe the cash would be like giving a drug addict a fix.

 

How do you break an addiction?  Stop enabling it. 

 

This time President Robert Mugabe may be finding it harder than usual to borrow money and fend off international censure. His country faces expulsion from the IMF if it proves unable to service its debt.

 

Cutting off the money (or South Africa’s alternative, simply turning off the power lines that keep Zimbabwe’s lights on and its generals in Mercedes) would bring Zimbabwe to a halt quickly.  But that raises what in public-private affordable housing I think of as the ‘hostage problem.’  Unless they have genuine choice and freedom to leave, a property’s residents can be taken economic hostage to the property, and to its owner.  HUD often finds itself facing the Hobson’s choice of enforcing against the owner (which consequentially harms the residents, at least in the short term), or protecting the residents (by subsidizing the property) and leaving the malfeasant owner in place.  Many years of confronting this conundrum have convinced HUD — as it has convinced me — that if the problem is the owner, you must get the owner out, and anything short of forcing out the owner is enabling exploitation.

 

Five years ago, Zimbabwe’s population stood at 16 million.  Today it is under 12 million, with most of the 4 million loss having fled.  And the slow pogrom continues:

 

The UN’s World Food Programme says that 2.9m of Zimbabwe’s 11m people face starvation unless they get handouts.

 

The psychopath trades on the humanity and guilt of normal people.

 

Mr Mbeki is in the uncomfortable position of trying to coax Zimbabwe towards reform while knowing that, if South Africa refuses to help out, it could melt down completely.

 

Custodian relationships invite exploitation.  Kleptocracy will end only when there is nothing left to pillage or steal.  Providing funding does not free the economic hostages, it simply enables their captors to milk the guilt racket longer.

 

Cutting off the money is the critical step even as it will accelerate the suffering.  That is what to watch, and that is what to push for.

 

But, as the Economist article puts it, with cool cynicism, “Robert Mugabe begs his friends to bail him out.  They probably will.”

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