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An Overview of Conditions Around the World
Zimbabwe: a crisis-torn country
Zimbabwe, at one time a prosperous African nation, is seriously short of food, and a lack of fuel has brought industry to a standstill. The country's infrastructure is fraying badly, with schools and hospitals struggling to survive. More than half the work force is unemployed, and one third of the army is helping the Congo's president, Laurent Kabila, in an expensive civil war in the Congo. Most blame these misfortunes on the brutal regime of Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe.
As Financial Times reporter Victor Mallet observed: "Millions of Zimbabweans have tired of old-fashioned anti-imperialistic rhetoric and want a change of faces at the top."
The Sunday Telegraph reported: "With the country's economy in tatters, thanks to years of misrule, Mugabe thought he had a guaranteed vote winner when his loyal constitutional panel drew up clause 57, to enshrine land confiscation and demand compensation for white farmers (from) the old colonial power: Britain."
Zimbabwe's government was in shock after citizens found the courage to stand up to the regime by voting no in a recent constitutional referendum. Yet widespread reports persist of the occupation of white-owned farms following that national vote, with some farmers and farm workers attacked and killed.
The Zimbabwe dollar was worth 50 British pence when President Mugabe assumed power. It is now valued at 1.5 pence. And as The Independent on Sunday observed: "Every week 1,200 Zimbabweans die of AIDS and life expectancy since 1980 has fallen from 59 to 42."
A beautiful and formerly prosperous country has been laid waste, and many of British descent are applying for passports at the British High Commission in the nation's capital, Harare, evidently preparing to emigrate.
Yet, in the words of the minister of state in the British Foreign Office: "Zimbabwe could be one of the success stories of Africa: It remains one of the richest countries, with huge mineral and agricultural resources. It has the best-educated population in Africa and a relatively good infrastructure.
"Zimbabwe is too important a country to be allowed to fail. Its people deserve better and its neighbours in Africa deserve better too." (Sources: The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mail, The Financial Times (all London).)
Africa: a crisis-torn continent
What happens to Zimbabwe now and in the near future may affect the entire continent. The long-awaited African renaissance has yet to materialize. Guns, brute force and political corruption shape Africa's future.
Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover explains: "In post-colonial Africa political power has been exercised solely for the benefit of the elites and their families, most of whom have enriched themselves on a vast scale. Ordinary people could be ignored, or if they become tiresome, persecuted. Their lives were not valued or their rights respected."
For instance, in Sierra Leone horrifying violence against civilians has led to the deaths of 50,000 people and massive injuries to many more. The sight of people missing part of their limbs is fairly common. On-site reporter and photographer Stuart Freedman filed these words for The Independent on Sunday: "In one of the century's most grotesque acts of collective cruelty, tens of thousands of people have been deliberately maimed, in punishment for lack of enthusiasm for a rebel regime . . ."
Meanwhile, tribal fighting ravages Nigeria. A mass murder-suicide of some 1,000 members of a religious cult recently occurred in Uganda. The country's vice president, Mrs. Specioza Kasibwe, described the cult's leaders as "diabolic, malevolent criminals masquerading as holy and religious people who outwitted the security network to exploit the ignorance of thousands."
Civil war has created the world's largest internal flight of refugees, in the Sudan. Nearly two million people will soon need food aid. In the words of The Sunday Times: "Weather has brought the drought, but war has exacerbated it."
The misery of Mozambique because of the recent floods that devastated much of southeastern Africa is known to anyone who watches international news. Hundreds are dead, thousands face hunger, and the country's economy faces a rough road.
On the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is not only mired in a costly, futile war with Eritrea, but is faced with a massive famine that threatens the lives of millions. The fighting has forced farmers to abandon their harvests in grain-producing regions and has inhibited the distribution of foreign aid.
Such is the general state of Africa. Strictly speaking, in relative terms few bright spots such as Ghana lie on the horizon. In Ghana, by regional standards, the country is prosperous and stable. While good things have happened in South Africa, its rates of murder and rape lead the Western world.
Rupert Cornwall summed up the African situation for The Independent on Sunday: "Maybe Africa is painfully inching towards a new era, free of post-colonial illusions and Cold War distortions. But for all the brave talk, the continent is entering the new century where it began the last one-at the bottom of the international heap. And not many futurologists would bet that it would be very different 100 years from now." (Sources: The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mail, The Economist (all London).)
A crisis-torn world
In spite of several millennia of technological progress and scientific advances, much of the world is mired in wars, poverty, disease and homelessness.
The more advanced nations are another story. Wrote essayist Jim Hoagland for The International Herald Tribune: "The arrival of the year 2000 finds more of the world's population living in good health and prosperity, educated and secure from territorial aggression than any other moment in history." At face value this reads as a somewhat overoptimistic assessment, but Mr. Hoagland does acknowledge that "more of the world's people also live in an awareness of their own relative or absolute poverty than ever before."
Approximately a billion of us are overweight, while another billion go hungry. Six billion of us live on the planet, the human family having doubled in 40 years. World population remains large and growing even though the 20th century brought unprecedented mass death and destruction, primarily by means of war and other human-induced catastrophes. What an age of incredible paradox!
Perhaps the main problem in this crisis-torn world is leadership, or the lack of it. Although Africa is a case in point, it is by no means the only continent burdened by bad leadership. Koffi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, despairs of the leaders of his own continent. He recently commented: "The quality of the leaders, the misery they have brought to their people and my inability to work with them to turn the situation around, are very depressing . . . In many countries the wrong kind have made it to leadership. They seek power for the sake of power and for their own aggrandisement rather than having a real understanding of the need to use power to improve their countries" (The Sunday Times).
Many national leaders clamor for more weapons of mass destruction, assuring us we need more firepower to ensure peace and prosperity. To have peace we need to be armed to the teeth-yet another paradox. (Sources: The International Herald Tribune, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian (all London), The Houston Chronicle.)
A world lacking in law and order
Why the paradoxes? Why the ongoing plague of violence and bloodshed? Why can't the human species get along? What inhibits us from respect and cooperation between nations and peoples that would ensure our survival and well-being?
A primary factor is a pervasive decline in respect for the rule of law. As The Washington Times put it: "Just as the 20th century was tripped up by ideologies smoldering beneath the surface, the 21st century is threatened by the decline of law."
Historian Paul Johnson echoes this analysis and stresses the importance of the rule of law. He explains: "The rule of law as distinct from the rule of a person, or class or people, and as opposed to the rule of force, is an abstract and sophisticated concept. It is mighty difficult to achieve. But until it is achieved, and established in the public mind with such vehemence that masses of individuals uphold it, no other form of progress can be regarded as secure."
Nothing characterizes our age more than widespread disregard for law and authority. Government leaders and police are too often figures of ridicule. Many people-including, at times, political leaders-seek to get around the law in any way they can. But we will never resolve our problems until we are law-abiding citizens in nations that occupy a world of law and order.
To be effective, law must be universally applied to everyone. There can be no exceptions. As Mr. Johnson explains: "The essence of the rule of law is its impersonality, omnipotence and ubiquity. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere-kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse-that was the grand lesson of antiquity."
He further noted: "The Bible can be seen as a gigantic treatise on the rule of law. God, outside and above humanity, is the objective legislator and enforcer, and all humankind are subject to his laws." Of course, he describes here an ideal world in which people keep the Ten Commandments as a way of life. (Sources: The Washington Times, The Sunday Telegraph.)
Coming: a law-abiding world
From the biblical point of view, we have reason to be optimistic. God promises a utopian world of lasting peace and prosperity, governed by the rule of law (Isaiah 2:1-4; Micah 4:1-3). Obedience to God's law will become universal, embracing all continents-including Africa, whose sufferings will become a thing of the past, long forgotten by its happy citizenry. This is part of the gospel-the good news-Jesus brought.
You can learn much more by requesting the free booklets The Gospel of the Kingdom, The Ten Commandments and Making Life Work. They will help you understand and experience the benefits of being a law-abiding person in the midst of a world that all too often rejects law and authority.
-John Ross Schroeder
© 2000-2022 United Church of God, an International Association
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