Over a thousand years ago, according to ancient English tradition, King Canute set his throne on the shore and ordered the tide to stop rising. Just over a month ago, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe took an equally bold stand, ordering inflation to stop forthwith or else he'd send those responsible to jail.
Canute ended up with the waves sloshing round his knees, but at least he had the satisfaction of teaching his courtiers a lesson on the limits of royal power ( he didn't really think that his words could stop the tide). Mr Mugabe will end up drowning in the inflation his own policies have created, but it will probably come as a great surprise to him, for he doesn't seem to understand that he can't just order it to stop.
'I believe inflation will hit 1,500,000 per cent by the end of 2007 if not before,' said Christopher Dell, the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, in an interview with The Guardian in late June. '... By carrying out disastrous economic policies, the Mugabe government is committing regime change upon itself.'
By last month, South Africa was putting together a proposal to stop the hyperinflation by pegging the Zimbabwean dollar to its own currency, the rand. Its huge foreign currency reserves would enable Zimbabwe to go on importing essential goods, the flow of economic refugees would slow and, gradually, the internal situation might stabilise. The price, however, was agreement by Mr Mugabe to key reforms to restore democracy.
But that would ultimately mean surrendering power, something that is inconceivable to the 83-year-old autocrat who has ruled Zimbabwe for the past 27 years. Indeed, the country's rapid descent into poverty began only when Mr Mugabe's rule was challenged. For the first two decades after the end of white minority rule, the economy grew steadily. But, then, people voted 'no' in a 2000 referendum that would have given all government and military officials amnesty for crimes committed while in office.
Mr Mugabe felt threatened, so he came up with a policy that kept his closest supporters loyal: he began confiscating the white-owned farms whose crops earned 80 per cent of the country's foreign exchange, handing most over to his cronies - who had no idea how to run them.
