
What happened to Zimbabwe - crocus
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/09/zimbabwe200809?printable=true&currentPage=all
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baruman
I find this article interesting in that part of what's necessary for
successful start-up industry is freedom of which Zimbabwe has none. As a
person of African descent and a Latin American living in the U.S. I am
constantly struck by leaders who do not understand the world economy or simply
dont care. A country like Zimbabwe, if they were to invest in their youth in
say OLPC for instance or sending x number of students to study Computer
Science or Engineering abroad; they would see an untold benefit societally in
15 to 25 years. Unfortunately we cant account for human greed and corruption
which drives the Mugabes of the the world.

~~~
dcurtis
The problem is that giving kids laptops does not make them smarter. OLPCs are
not magical teachers.

Also, especially in Zimbabwe, if you invest in sending children abroad to
study, they will probably never come back. One of their biggest problems for
the future is the mass exodus of intelligent, educated people from the
country.

~~~
baruman
I of course was referring to some system where if I pay for your education you
come back and work in the country fro x number of years. It cant just be a
system where the government pays for the education of a few hundred or
thousand people and they move to New York or London. There have to be other
factors whereby the government and private industry make it attractive for
people to come back and start technology start-ups.

~~~
dcurtis
I see this as a knee-jerk solution, but once these educated children see the
western world, they will not want to stay in Zimbabwe; to force them to stay
is tantamount to indentured servitude.

I've been thinking about possible solutions for Zimbabwe, but there aren't
many. The first step is to remove Robert Mugabe from power and, probably with
international help, instill some sort of civility and credibility in the
government there by appointing a just governor. But there are no protections
against what happened to Mugabe happening to the new president/ruler. Absolute
power corrupts absolutely, as Orwell said.

In the short term, Zimbabwe is kind of screwed. They have a hyperintelligent
criminal dictator, a mass exodus of their most intelligent and rich people,
and inflation so high that conducting business is impossible. And the
government there doesn't seem to be doing anything drastic to fix these
problems.

It's sad. More than ten million people live there in extreme poverty. And just
ten years ago, it had some of the highest standards of living in all of
Africa.

------
kingkongrevenge
The problem with Zimbabwe is that it's not Rhodesia.

~~~
baruman
Anything is better than European colonialism...

~~~
crocus
_Anything?_

------
swombat
Nothing to do with hackers.

~~~
mattmaroon
I think we're all a little tired of the off-topic police. +1 for giving it a
rest.

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than
hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might
be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I'd argue that we should simply flag accounts as hackers, thereby, by
definition, greenlighting anything they post, except I wouldn't be one of
them.

~~~
qqq
> I think we're all a little tired of the off-topic police.

Do you think I should submit this link?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin>

(I read it today to satisfy my intellectual curiosity.)

~~~
gruseom
I'm interested in Isaiah Berlin too, but I wouldn't submit that link. It's not
particularly good. It probably wouldn't get many hackers interested in Isaiah
Berlin. But if you felt the article was particularly good, I don't see why you
shouldn't go ahead and post it. It would be within the HN guidelines to do so.

It's impossible to follow the guidelines precisely, because good hackers
aren't all interested in the same things. For any post outside the safety zone
of, say, programming, startups, math and maybe physics, there will be some
good hackers who aren't interested. But it doesn't follow that others won't
like it a lot. The trouble with the "off-topic police" is that they're trying
to speak for all hackers about what's not interesting. _Le HN c 'est moi._

Edit: How about this? Do you think I should submit it?
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858701285435131.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858701285435131.html)

------
maxklein
Zimbabwe is War 2.0. You know how things moved online? Well, Zimbabwe is what
happens when a media and economic war is waged against a country. The war is
between Britain and Zimbabwe, and the REALLY sad part is that all of you have
been convinced by the one-sided propaganda you read. How many of you who think
you know the entire story have actually ever read the Zimbabwean side of
things?

It's war 2.0 folks, and you don't even realise it. Africa has a completely
different perspective on the Zimbabwe conflict, but in your freedom to read
whatever they provide for you to read, you have no other sources of
information.

~~~
jbyers
I was in Zimbabwe in September of last year. This article matches very closely
with our impressions of the political climate of the country and seems
consistent with the opinions of the Zimbabweans we talked to -- at least,
those who were willing to talk openly about politics. Certainly there's an
economic war going on, but it seems a civil war, where any semblance of a
functioning economy has long since been manipulated into uselessness by
Mugabe's hand. I carry my own biases to be sure, but it was hard not to draw
this conclusion from what we saw last year and the terrible decline since
then.

Zimbabwe's current situation is complex, charged, and forged out of decades of
conflict among groups inside and outside the country. I can't argue outright
there isn't another broad perspective on what's happening, but I'd like to
read about it for myself. Please post links.

