Survival Strategies; Broke and fed up with Mugabe, millions are fleeing.

Byline: Karen MacGregor, With Jan Raath in Harare

Hundreds of guests gathered last Saturday under an enormous marquee in Zvimba, Zimbabwe, about 80km west of the capital city of Harare. For a country spiraling into squalor, it was elegant soiree. The occasion was the 80th birthday of President Robert Mugabe. Months ago the controversial leader had hinted that he would step down from public office when he became an octogenarian. But Mugabe shows no signs of slowing down--or giving ground to the many people inside his country, and in the international community, who say he is ruining Zimbabwe. A youth militia, organized to check dissent in the run-up to elections two years ago, terrorizes political opponents. In February the Zimbabwe Supreme Court, with Mugabe's support, crushed what was left of the independent press, upholding the government's right to license publications and their employees. Last week Mugabe issued a new decree, under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign, that allows the detention of suspects without a trial for a month, and shifts the burden of proof onto the accused. At his birthday bash, the controversial leader suggested he might retain his position for a few more years.

That's a scary thought for his people. Over the past six years Zimbabwe's gross domestic product has fallen by 33 percent, and manufacturing output has shrunk by 41 percent. The jobless rate is 70 percent, and the inflation rate this year could hit 1,000 percent. A new gold rush is despoiling Zimbabwe's rivers. Poor rural residents "are panning every river system in the country, including areas where we know there is no gold," says Harare mining consultant John Holloway. A prolonged drought and Mugabe's policy of throwing whites off their land have largely destroyed Zimbabwe's agrarian economy. According to U.N. relief officials, starvation now threatens half the population in a once bounteous country. "Mugabe has failed, I tell you," says Fungai Madzongo, an out-of-work truck driver. "After independence in 1980, it was health for all in 2000, housing for all in 2000. Now it's squatters for all, AIDS for all, hunger for all."

Stunned by the deteriorating conditions, Zimbabweans have opted for a simple survival strategy--flee. Every day in the capital, hundreds of people queue at a government office for passports needed to leave the country. Already 3.4 million Zimbabweans--a quarter of the population--have moved abroad, more than a million of them to Britain, the central bank estimates. At the Plumtree crossing into Botswana, there is little attempt to hide the passing of bribes to border officials by Zimbabweans ...