Driven To Desperation

This is what Robert Mugabe has wrought in Zimbabwe. Not only is the inflation rate over 100,000% with no sign of slowing down, but it's forcing otherwise decent people into depravity just to survive.

Maria is one of as many as 300 Zimbabwean women working in prostitution in the Zambian border town of Livingston.

Their numbers are increasing, and their rates are the cheapest in town - such is their desperation.

In better days, many of these women led very different lives - among them a policewoman, a soldier, and a bank official.

Now they huddle in the doorway of a brothel in the downtown area, waiting for customers.

"I feel a very deep pain just to think that I was once a businesswoman," Maria said.

"And now I am a mere prostitute. Can you imagine?

"I ask God to forgive me and just to give me something, so that my kids will have something to eat.

"I wasn't expecting this, but from the situation back home we have no choice. We do what we can do to put something on the table."

This is what Mugabe has done to a people that once lived in the breadbasket of Africa. He's destroying an entire society because of his craven and thoroughly misguided economic policies. Once thriving economic ties are a mere trickle as the Zimbabwean economy grinds to a halt.

Mugabe isn't above threatening those few remaining businesses of raising prices to cover their own costs. He wants them to roll back prices to a level when the government last set prices on February 12, which will do nothing more than accelerate inflationary pressures.

All this comes as the country is about to undertake elections on March 29. The State Department warns of irregularities being reported that threaten the veracity of the results, including incorrect voter rolls and intimidation of opposition candidates.