In Zimbabwe
Diana Stone, 4 April 2019
Diana Stone’s piece in this issue first appeared on the LRB blog. You can read it here.
Diana Stone
Diana Stone is an archaeologist based in Weymouth.
From The Blog
21 March 2019
Before the cyclone, there was a drought in Zimbabwe. People prayed for rain; and then the rain came, and it was not at all what was wished for. It seems brutally unfair: to have lost so much, in so brief a time, at the ordinance of the sky.
Diary: Nightmares in Harare
Diana Stone, 7 March 2019
Zimbabwe doesn’t need to be poor; that’s what’s so devastating. It has copious minerals, well-managed water resources, an educated and ambitious population, a safari park the size of Belgium, and some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. It’s poor in part because of theft on a grand scale: Zimbabwe is being looted by its own government. Small numbers of elite Zimbabweans feel entitled to wealth, and the only way for them to get as rich as they feel they should be is to plunder the parastatals and the public purse. Uncertainty about the current regime and how long it will survive makes for extreme myopia.
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