Is Zim a failed or collapsed State?

ZARTMAN (1995) posits that State failure occurs when the basic functions of the State are no longer performed.

Implied is a situation where the structure, authority (legitimate power), law, and political order have fallen apart.

State failure can manifest in many ways such as lack of economic development and political representation, skewed income distribution and so on.

Of late, Zimbabwe seems to be both a failed and/or collapsed State, where the government fails to provide basic commodities to its citizens.

The local currency has virtually become useless. Whenever one is paid, they have to rush to the black market to buy United States dollars to pay rent or school fees as the local currency has been rendered worthless.

Manufacturers are demanding hard currency for products manufactured locally. Imagine!

This is a clear indication that Zimbabwe is going where we are coming from, the poor becoming poorer. It is going nowhere fast.

If the government cannot provide passports, identity cards and other public goods, is there any possibility of it creating employment or awarding a salary increment to its restive workers?

There is no better pointer to State failure or collapse than this.

It is evident that the government has failed its citizens, especially those in the countryside.

It is a human rights abuse to deny citizens basic commodities and a decent life.

Rotberg (2002) postulates that nation-States fail because they can no longer deliver positive political goods to their people.

Their governments lose legitimacy, and in the eyes and hearts of a growing plurality of its citizens, the nation-State itself becomes illegitimate.

The failed States literature stresses that there are certain indicators that are necessary (if not sufficient) to categorise a State as “failed”.

Rotberg (2003) identifies a number of important indicators. First, the persistence of political violence is salient in most definitions of “failed States”.

Evidence of August 1, 2018 post-election shootings in Harare, points to a situation of a failed State. For Rotberg (2003), “failed States are tense, polarised, deeply conflicted, dangerous and bitterly contested by warring factions”.

In most failed States, corruption, cronyism, unruly behaviour by government are rampant.