Is Zimbabwe a failed state

IF results of surveys in the past three weeks are anything to go by, then Zimbabweans are wallowing joyfully in their failures.

Zimbabweans had everything to smile about when the 2012 Happy Planet Index claimed they were much happier than their neighbours South Africa and Botswana.

After years of political downturn and an unprecedented economic slide, the Happy Planet Index showed that Zimbabweans were still a happy bunch and they accepted the results unquestioningly.

But a week later, the country's smile was wiped off its collective face, after the Foreign Policy magazine indicated that Zimbabwe ranked fifth in an index of failed states.

Zimbabwe was placed in the same category as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zimbabweans are livid, saying this cannot be possible.

"Sure Zimbabwe is not perfect. But seriously, fifth least functional country in the world?" Amanda Atwood, of Kubatana asked.

To follow up on their claims on failed states, Foreign Policy came up with a series of pictures, dubbed "Postcards from Hell", but Atwood says this is more reason to conclude that Zimbabwe cannot be said to have failed.

"There are the bloody bodies of a suicide attack in Kabul (Afghanistan), a bloodied protestor in DRC and a bombed out vehicle in Sudan," she said.

"It's telling that the worst image they could find for Zimbabwe was a torn election poster. Seeing as how the last election was in 2008, it's no wonder the poster was torn."

National University of Science and Technology (Nust) lecturer, Lawton Hikwa said it was unconceivable that Zimbabwe was in the same league as Somalia, arguing that as with any other research, the results of this survey had to be interpreted contextually.

"Zimbabwe cannot be said to be a failed state," he said matter-of-factly. "In a survey like this there are lots of variables but I can imagine that the government has continued functioning and we cannot be said to have failed."

Hikwa conceded that the last decade had been bad for Zimbabwe, as there were "political occurrences" that had led to an economic downturn, but this could hardly be described as a mark of a failed state.

But Bekithemba  Mpofu, an associate dean at the University of Reading, United Kingdom, said every survey had an element of subjectivity and there was always conflict between the various surveys primarily because of the indicators used to arrive at a conclusion or index.

"Using the international indicators for failed states, Zimbabwe is a failed state," Mpofu, an econometrics and finance expert, said.  "If you closely look at the calculation, Zimbabwe has the highest human flight index and factionalised elites in the world and these figures do feed into the overall calculation."

Mpofu said the argument should be centred on the relevance and accuracy of these indicators as good inference of failed states.

"I think they are appropriate in the calculation, thus I do consider Zimbabwe on these perimeters a failed state," Mpofu, who is also a founding secretary general of the MDC youth league, said.

"The GNU has not done much to address these issues, look at the percentage of people in the diaspora and the factionalised civil service like the army and other security institutions."


As if that was not enough, another survey that somehow contradicted that Zimbabwe was a failed state was released hardly a week later.

Zimbabwe was in the top five climbers in countries that have improved their peace situations, according to the Global Peace Index survey carried out by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The southern African country is the only African country in the top five gainers, while Malawi, Egypt and Tunisia were some of the worst performing countries in the past year.