Examples that immediately come to mind include the Congo war adventure
in which at some point Zimbabwe was spending more than US$1 million a
day.
Those in power now might as well look at those days with both envy and
regret. The cost of the Congo war to Zimbabwe has never been fully
accounted to date, both in human and monetary terms.
The Congo adventure combined with the unbudgeted payments to war
veterans and the looting of the same fund have also never been fully
revealed in as far as how they dented the country's purse and their
contribution to the current economic crisis.
The social strife that arose from the economic challenges led to half-
hearted political machinations such as the constitutional reform
process meant to pacify a restive civil society.
When this failed the ruling elite went for broke, instigating farm
invasions and political violence under such hollow slogans as the land
is the economy and the economy is the land.
Zimbabwe has been poisoned by divisive politicians who churned out
doses of meaningless ideological mantras. This only brought successive
years of hunger and increased poverty.
Zimbabwe never recovered from this and has never been the same. The
rest, as they say, is history. This background brings us to the latest
efforts by the unity government to settle the wrongs of the past 15
years or so.