Middle East & Africa | From the archives

Give him his bread

In 1980, The Economist was optimistic about Zimbabwe's new leader, Robert Mugabe

Is the west going to squander its most signal advance in modern southern Africa—an advance achieved in the first place only by luck, by Marxist Mr Robert Mugabe and by three unlikely British peers, Lords Carrington, Harlech and Soames? Yes, it will squander that achievement in Zimbabwe, won almost without a single western bullet being fired, if rich democratic countries go on acting as though they were poor.

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