A) A country that lost its access to the means of production was Zimbabwe. The means of production that was lost in this country was land and eventually raw materials that were being produced. Zimbabwe once exported food, but now requires massive food aid due to what happened under the presidents rule. Zimbabwe was once seen as Africa’s breadbasket. It was rich in raw materials as well as industrious farmland. Zimbabwe would grow all the food needed for its own people and had left over that they would then export. Agriculture was the mainstay of its economy. The farm sector employed thousands of workers. In addition to having a strong farm sector, Zimbabwe also had a refined manufacturing base and a strong banking division. The court system was very trusted by the people and there was low crime rate. The country had a secure rule of law which allowed owners to use their land to develop and build new businesses or even expand old ones. Because of all the security and trust in the country, all that led to a strong GDP growth. Even though it was successful it would not be protected from law and rules that would then be established.
President Robert Mugabe started to seize farms due to the notion of land reform. The best farms in turn were taken away and given to people who were not really willing to take care of them. There were huge differences in the farming regions after he started to distribute the land within the individuals in the country. In some areas of the country there were well kept commercial farms that made thousands of acres of cash crops whereas the others farms were crowded together and really small. Most of the commercial farms were owned by 4,500 white families and in contrast about 840,000 black farmers barely m...
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...e imports from South Africa, but that country is also producing lower than normal.
Works Cited
Clemens, Michael, and Todd Moss. "Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe’s Crisis."Center for Global Devleopment. N.p., July 2005. Web. 09 May 2014. .
"Fighting Famine in Southern Africa: Steps Out of the Crisis." International Food Policy Research Institute, 2002. Web. 09 May 2014. .
Richardson, Craig J. "How the Loss of Property Rights Caused Zimbabwe’s Collapse." Cato.org. N.p., 14 Nov. 2005. Web. 09 May 2014.
Richardson, Craig J. "The Loss of Property Rights and the Collapse of Zimbabwe." Cato Journal 25.3 (2005): n. pg. Cato Institute. Web. 9 May 2014. .
... labour being something that largely available within traditional black families, they now have two major production factors that can help in the production of goods (if only food crops) to improve their livelihood. The present economic stalemate in Zimbabwe is meant to discredit Mugabe. It is intended to continue the racist doctrine that blacks are stupid, that when the whites owned the lands they could boost the economy but with lands coming into the possession of blacks they are unable to produce.
According to T.O. Ranger in “Revolt in Southern Rhodeisa”, the first Chimurenga, which occurred from 1896-1897, was an uprising in response to the imposition of colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe (ix). The Nbele and Shona people resisted the colonial rule and in return endured a complex set of struggles over land and cattle and taxes. The inability and unwillingness of the Euroopeans to understand the Nbele and Shona people’s culture and religion misguides perceptions of events and views of their behavoior and actions (2). Terrance mentions during the colonial rule, many Europeans thought the people of Africa were content with the new administration and misunderstood the reaction of the “African pople of Southern Rhodesia to colonial rule…, this misunderstanding arose…partly out of white ignorance of the history of the Shona and the Ndebele…Edwards [confessed ],we knew nothing of their past history, who they were or where they came from, and although many of the Native commissioners had…knowledge of their language, none of us really understood the people or could follow their line of thought, we… looked down on them as a downtrodden race who were grateful to the white man for protection” (2). The Europeans did not treat them as equals because they saw them as dependent and thought of their lives as meaningless. They believed the Shona and Ndebele people had no roots or culture and therefore had no history. Terrance Ranger mentions “the whites believed that the Shona people would not rebel because they believed that the Shona had no roots, no sense of history; no sense of religion,…no way of life worth fighting and dying for” (2). The African people of these cultures were seen as inferior by the Europeans...
The Rhodesian Revolution Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, is a nation that never featured apartheid. Race relations were generally decent under the government of Ian Smith. Smith's book "The Great Betrayal" clearly spells this out. Former President, Jimmy Carter, would not even see Ian Smith in 1979 when Smith came to the White House to beg for help. Ian Smith then asked Henry Kissinger for help when Carter would not help him.
With Europe in control, “the policies of the governing powers redirected all African trade to the international export market. Thus today, there is little in the way of inter-African trade, and the pattern of economic dependence continues.” Europeans exported most of the resources in Africa cheaply and sold them costly, which benefited them, but many Africans worked overtime and were not treated with care.
Sywester, Kevin. Decolonization and economic growth: the case of Africa. Journal of economic development. December 2005. 30(2); p.89-91.
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
Haiti is a Caribbean country with a population of about 10.32 million people. This low- income country is the poorest in the western hemisphere. This country is handicapped by problems such as deforestation and only bearing 3% of its land forested. In the midst of natural disasters many portions of the environment and population become compromised. In Haiti almost 97% of the “working class” make up the agricultural and informal sector. In August of 2008 Haiti was impacted by four hurricanes, greatly damaging the countries heath, well-being, infrastructure and economic production. The hurricanes took the gross domestic product from a 3.7% to 1.3%.
The Lives of Women in Zimbabwe My great hope for African women, South African author Adeola James writes, "is that one day they will come into their own. That is why I chose to write." As African women struggle to claim their rightful place in African society and in the world, women writers, visual artists, and musicians chart the course of this struggle in a rich variety of artistic works. Through prose, poetry, drama, sculpture, painting, music, and many other forms, African women speak their thoughts and share their perceptions about their lives and their societies.
Renowned for its “of the people” foundation, democracy has become the regime type to which we compare all other regime types- a gold standard of government structure. Because of this ideal, it is of comparative interest that we understand how to classify regimes as either democratic or dictatorial. The Polity IV Measure is a standard for democracy that scores a country (from -10 to +10) on how democratic or dictatorial their election processes and governmental procedures are. Post-independence Zimbabwe is a country that classifies itself as a parliamentary democracy, however due to a history of election scandals and Zimbabwe African National Union’s (ZANU, the current ruling party) maintenance of power for over thirty years, Polity IV granted them a “mixed regime type” score of -4. (Clark, Golder, and Golder 160) It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Zimbabwe does not have a mixed regime, but rather that it employs an authoritarian regime type. After outlining the controversial events resulting from the 2000 general election and surrounding the 2002 presidential election, I...
Over a period from 1960-1965, the first Republic of the Congo experienced a period of serious crisis. There was a terrible war for power that displayed senseless violence and the desperation to rule. There were many internal conflicts among the people. The country eventually gained independence from Belgium. For many countries this would be a time for celebration. Unfortunately for the people of the Congo this became a time to forget. Almost immediately after independence and the general elections, the country went into civil war. Major developed cities like Katanga and Kasai wanted to be independent from the Lumumba government. Different factions started to fight the government and Katanga and Kasai tried to secede from the rest of the country out of fear of the mutinous army that was out of control looting and killing.
Our society is being forced to deal with uneducated, illiterate high school graduates. You may ask how is a high school graduate so ill prepared for the world. Have you ever been to a store where a young person, maybe a high school student is the sales associate and the register shuts down right before you receive your change? Did you notice the look of panic on their face because they were not sure how much change you were supposed to receive? It is because of the national crisis, social promotion that can be accredited to this dependency on everything except their educated brain’s. We as educated people must help find a way to save our children from wasting their academic careers due to social promotion. "Truly embracing the idea that all children can learn and making sure that all children do, requires that we all take responsibility for ending social promotion." (www.ed.gov) If we accept and aim to prove that all people are capable of learning life’s basic necessities we will start breaking down the wall of stupidity social promotion has built.
Artadi, Elsa V., and Xavier Sala-i-Martin. The Economic Tragedy of the XXth Century: Growth in Africa. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003. Print.
1. What impact do natural resources have on economic growth? Will it be possible for a country with few natural resources to grow rapidly? Why or why not.
...t cooked up a scarcity in the mineral richness of Africa. This was a disadvantage for the countries of Africa of its raw materials. There was no chance for Africa to develop and be in competition with the world since they were in rivalry with Europe.
According to Collier & Dollar, (2001) economic growth is normally dependent on the nature and quality of economic policies that a country implements. In South Africa, soon after apartheid the government have tried to wrestle with the multiple objectives which are namely to reduce poverty, increase employment, increase international trade as well as increasing the rate of economic growth. According to Mohr et al, (2015) the macroeconomic objectives are used to assess the performance of the economy. The five macroeconomic objectives that will be discussed in this assignment are firstly the economic growth, full employment, price stability, balance of payments and equitable distribution of income. The assignment will then evaluate each of the objectives of macroeconomic growth and asses where South Africa as a country is performing on each of these respective points.