This is long anthropological and historical chronology of what happened, which is a typical African story of Africa untangling its self from the debacle of colonialism. Unfortunately many socalled liberation "heros" erroneously thought raising flags on independence meant the problems had ended so it was time to sit back and party, when it was only the beginning of the challenging work of nation building. It is should be a lesson of many Africa countries, including South Africa.

Reading through this piece the one conclusion one can draw is failure of leadership on the part of Mugabe: from the time of the Lancaster Convention to date one theme is starkly clear - that Mugabe has been playing and exploiting the land for his power aggrandizement.

The verdict: failure of Mugabe to provide sound and competent leadership for such long time.

And thus, all the more reason to get rid of Mugabe. He has been a total abject failure in resolving Zimbabwes problems, especially the land issue.

On Idi Amin and Uganda: the land issues, despite Amin driving Asians out inhumanely, are far from being resolved. The land issue in Uganda is about to unravel the equally heavy handed corrupt dictatorship of Uganda's Mugabe clone: Museveni.

Mugabe is mental forever accusing countries of trying to invade Zim. WHy they invade a wrecked country

This article is excellent. It appears that Pres. Bush recent proposal to appoint the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank chief to the IMF as a senior VP could be construed as an olive branch. As a VP of the IMF, he would be ideally situated to help relieve the credit crisis brought on by the IMF's participation in sanctions (specifially credit for infrastructure).

This a brillian piece. If Al Gore were to write this he would have headed it "An inconvenient truth."

This is the story most people prefer not to hear. And for some reason many people would like to think that South African circumstances here are vastly different from Zimbabwe. But mark my words, the land problem remains a time bomb and it's not a matter of if but when it will explode. Polokwane was just a small dress rehearsal. And like they say, Just watch this space ..........Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, but the social realities of the newly independent state remained embedded in an earlier historical period: some six thousand white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares of prime land, 39 per cent of the land in the country, while about 4.5 million farmers (a million households) in 'communal areas' were left to subsist on 16.4 million hectares of the most arid land, to which they'd been removed or confined by a century of colonial rule. In the middle were 8500 small-scale black farmers on about 1.4 million hectares of land.

Well researched article, but there is a key issue that the writer fails to recognize, and as a result he seems to come to the conclusion that the situation in Zimbabwe is all concocted by the West. It is without dispute that colonialism is at the root of the problems, but at some point a people have to own their own destiny and deal with issues. Here is my point: Firstly Mugabe would have lost every election since about 1996 if it had been a free and fair election with proper unbiased voter education and registration. He would even have lost in the country-side. So it is false to assume that Zanu PF has, as a nationalist party, had the genuine support of people in the country side. Contrary to what the article says, there is no real divide between people in the country and those in the city - the real divide in voter education - people knowing their rights and their ability to exercise their right without intimidation. That alone gives the West grounds to raise questions on issues of governance (and good governance).

While I think this was well researched, the conclusions seem to be merely academic - a professor at Columbia giving a critic on Western policies (You have to publish something that raises eye-brows - something that goes against the grain). The reality is Mugabe's regime is a tyranny, and people in Zimbabwe are suffering immensely due to bad policies that can squarely be traced back to Mugabe - irrespective of what the West has done in the past, or whatever other agendas may exist out there. The people of Zimbabwe cannot afford to be used as a platform for voicing disputes on Western policies. They cannot afford the 'clouding' of facts on who is actually to blame for the situation, by someone living in comfort somewhere else.

You have hit the nail on the head,drpanashe -that this well researched article misses out the glaring failure of leadership by Mugabe as the real tragedy of Zimbabwe. Mugabe has subverted the people's republic by creating a ZanuPF monarchy and that is really the reason for the country's spectacular decline. Respect for party democracy would have produced more competent leadership within ZanuPF itself and the Western sponsored opposition movement would not exist.

Thank you nice to see a journalist who is brave enough to write something true about zimbabwe. Most of us are sick and tired of the obvious attempts to make us believe that an attempt to correct the land question is a way of trying to starve ourselves.

Slaves were not better off as slaves. Yes they suffered a lot after they were free (no food, homeless and penniless)

Some of us always knew that trying to change the legacy of colonialism would lead to the worst sanctions ever seen - basically IF WE CAN'T HAVE IT, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT.

You will need loans for farming we will block that. You will need markets will block that.

Fascinating article. It shows how multifaceted the issues in Zimbabwe are and in particular the issues that will remain even when Mugabe has gone. The deep divide between urban and rural Zimbabwean society is mirrored in developing countries the world over (China, Latin America et al) and no doubt the world will see more 'Mugabe'look alikes in future.

Where this article falls down is it fails to really show that the malignant effect of corruption and nepotism above all else is the primary contributor to Zimbabwe becoming a failed state. It is an interesting academic exercise to investigate the roots of Zimbabwe's malaise, however, the lesson of failed leadership is lost by the time author has concluded his case. It should also be noted that the failure of leadership is as much an African one as Mugabe's.

Nevertheless, it is an article that is well worth reading if only because it presents a fresh, but not necessarily entirely valid, view of the agony of Zimbabwe.

That is the most balanced article on Zimbawe that I have read to date. Those comments from the "why can't you just condemn Mugabe" brigade are the usual frutrated hot air blasts from the nether rear region...

Yes, one of the progressives' best rhetorical weapons is to pretend there is complexity where none exists, the better to shroud their actual machinations behind a shifting veil. It encourages common people to give up on ever trying to understand what's really going on, and convinces them to just let the leaders do whatever they want, and assume their flowery rhetoric means it's working.

Mugabe came to power this way, stays in power this way, and will never be removed from power this way. Thank you, progressives, for helping to defeat the overpopulation problem in Zimbabwe.