Africa's Imperiled Dream.(democracy dying in Zimbabwe)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

The work permit stamped in my passport was still valid. But last week, without any official explanation, I was expelled from Zimbabwe, a "prohibited immigrant." I broke no laws during the nine years I lived in Zimbabwe, working mostly as a journalist. If there is a case against me, it should be stated and proved. I have a right to defend myself. But rights do not mean very much in Zimbabwe these days. My deportation was illegal. Still, it is no worse than what is done to the people of Zimbabwe. The Army raids black townships and indiscriminately beats people. A militia directed from the State House terrorizes rural folk. Mobs led by veterans of the liberation war of the 1970s invade commercial farms and evict farm workers. Riot police assault opposition parliamentarians. Saboteurs blow up the press of the only independent daily newspaper. The BBC correspondent was expelled along with me, and stringent new regulations for foreign correspondents were announced. Local reporters with the independent media are routinely harassed and beaten up by militiamen. Zimbabwe has turned into a police state.

When I arrived in 1992 from Rome, this beautiful country--and all southern Africa--seemed poised for takeoff. Apartheid was ending in South Africa, Angola had a fresh peace agreement and Mozambique seemed to have emerged from its civil war. Their neighbor, my new home, set an inspiring example. "Zimbabwe shows that an African country can work," I told friends. Its roads, cities and parks were well kept. Trains ran on time. Nearly every child went to school. Hospitals were adequate. People had enough to eat. There wasn't a great variety of goods on offer, but the basic stuff was there. I liked it so much that I left my good job as a spokesperson for the United Nations World Food program after two years and decided to stay on as a freelance journalist, turning down another assignment in Rome.

But the ground was shifting. Because of "structural adjustment," tuna and disposable diapers appeared on the shelves--but the poor were saddled with new school and hospital fees. By 1997 UNICEF and Oxfam were reporting rising child and mother mortality rates. Poverty rates spiraled: from 40 percent to 79 percent, according to official government figures. The good news was the birth of human-rights watchdogs, an independent press and a trade-union movement with teeth.

Slowly but steadily, the ruling party's popularity eroded. As parliamentary elections approached last spring, President Robert Mugabe's government was desperate. Human-rights ...