Robert Mugabe has quit as president of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, ending a 37-year rule principally defined by economic collapse. "We have [economic] problems, [but] we have resources. ..." This was the famous remark of 93-year-old Mugabe on the occasion of last World Economic Forum. No doubt, this African country has reserves of metallurgical-grade chromite, coal, asbestos, copper, nickel, gold, platinum and iron ore. It also had until some years ago one of the world's most productive commercial farming systems in place. Then the question is: What are the reasons behind Zimbabwe's economic woes that have immensely contributed to Mugabe's downfall? Zimbabwe's is a US $ 14 billion economy ranking 123rd in the world. Unemployment rate is 90 percent in this country where 80 percent of population lives below the poverty line. Interestingly, however, this landlocked country located in southern Africa boasts a very high literacy rate like any former or present Communist country: over 90 percent of Zimbabweans are literate. A 2014 report by the Africa Progress Panel had found that "of all the African countries looked at when working out how many years it would take to double their per capita GDP, Zimbabwe fared the worst and that its current rate of development it would take 190 years for the country to double its per capita GDP".
Mugabe on Tuesday quit after parliament began an impeachment process against the autocrat in a nation that witnessed an unprecedented week in which military seized control, his ZANU-PF party expelled him, tens of thousands of Zimbabwean citizens took to the streets to demand the president go and he wrestled to remain in power. An urbane and educated Mugabe was always extremely good at providing "plausible" answers to even worst of blunders that he committed during his rule that was strongly characterized by corruption and inept handling of economic challenges. He, for example, had once tried to justify the invasion of white-owned efficient commercial farms by black people as "correction of colonial injustices"; and he never conceded the fact that the popular unrest was actually caused by slow pace of land reforms in his country of roughly 16 million people.
The founding father of Zimbabwe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, could have secured a place of pre-eminence in his country's history but alas that was not to be. Instead he would be remembered for having ruined his country and running its economy to the ground. His successor, Mnangawa, who in fact was his long time associate and henchman and presumed successor till Mugabe removed him to pave the way for his ambitious wife, Grace, to succeed him, has a chequered past and does not generate much hope and confidence that he would steer Zimbabwe to path of civil rights, rule of law and reduction in the rampant corruption that prevails at present.