Zimbabwe

Men in rubber boots are swinging axes in the ice mist of the Tsukiji fish market. Frozen tuna skitters and slides across the warehouse floor, white slabs looking nothing like the delicate red flesh that will be sliced and rolled onto pretty plates in...

He has lost his export customers, struggled with power cuts and shortages of foreign currency and raw materials. He has raised prices several times a month to keep up with hyperinflation. He has shrugged off government inspectors angling for bribes....

Kuda Shumba goes at one speed: fast. He prides himself on being able to get hold of almost anything, and he's open for business day or night. That's what it takes to be one of Zimbabwe's black-market cowboys. Shumba spends his days on a motorbike...

The two men stared at each other for a long moment, captor and captive: a white game farmer named Andre Nienaber, with mirrored sunglasses, neatly pressed khaki clothes and an aura of military precision; and a 16-year-old Zimbabwean orphan named Peter...

Everything you'd expect to find in the office of a senior official in Zimbabwe's ruling party was there: the dominating portrait of President Robert Mugabe, the yellowing photos of liberation martyrs and heroes. The only discordant note was in the words...

Jane Sibanda waits until the hunger claws her insides and she is so dizzy from lack of food that she can barely stand it. Then, ashamed, the 70-year-old forces herself to beg for food from other villagers, who themselves are close to starving. "I take a...

Mufakose, Zimbabwe The first to go was the English teacher. Six months later, the commerce teacher followed. The next year, 2005, the trickle turned into an exodus. By 2007, the departures from Mufakose 3 High School were like bricks in a collapsing...

Like so many corporate executives, Ed Meyer dreamed of retiring to the countryside. And so, seven years ago, he and his wife, Sally, left Cape Town to settle on the 3,500-acre ranch that had been in Ed's family since 1916. It's not hard to see what...

In one of his most strongly worded statements directed at the government of Zimbabwe to date, President Bush recently joined a chorus of international leaders and statesmen in calling for its monstrous president, Robert Mugabe, to step down. As he has...

The "green bomber" dropped into Club M5 the other day to get a bottle of Lion beer to go, but he wasn't fast enough. Right away he was surrounded by five members of the opposition, people he used to beat up, in a township bar where he used to be king....

As Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, presides over what might be the most rapid disintegration yet of a modern nation-state, it has become de rigueur for journalists, politicians and academics to offer what has become a near-universal analysis: Mugabe,...

Conditions on bailouts Re “Desperate auto chiefs plead anew,” Dec. 5 I applaud the efforts of the Big Three American automakers to present plans for regaining financial health as a condition for collecting their bailout money. My...