Harare

It's summer and the purple flowers on the jacaranda trees have begun to bloom, but they're little comfort to Zimbabweans in the middle of a dire economic crisis. You can tell it's bad here because even the death of Ian Smith last month did not arouse much hostile comment. The domestic consensus is that Mugabe has managed both to follow in Smith's tyrannical footsteps and to wreck the formal economy at the same time.

This is Africa's breadbasket turned basketcase and though the first EU-Africa summit in seven years starts this week ...

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