Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Landlocked but endowed with good farmlands, cool uplands, and a wide range of mineral resources, Zimbabwe at independence had one of Southern Africa’s most vibrant economies and seemed to have a bright future. Its core area straddles the mineral-rich Great Dyke that extends across the heart of the country, which contains copper, gold, asbestos, chromium, and platinum. Its farms are capable of producing tobacco, tea, sugar, and cotton in addition to staples for the local market. But going back almost four decades, these have not been good times for Zimbabwe. During the colonial period, the tiny minority of whites that controlled what was then called Southern Rhodesia (after Cecil Rhodes, the British capitalist of diamond fame and scholarship honors), took the most productive farmlands and organized and ran the agricultural economy. Following independence, their descendants continued to hold huge estates, only parts of which were being farmed. In the absence of comprehensive land reform, let alone progress toward democratic rule, the persistence of this monstrous inequality impeded broad-based development. . . . By the mid-1990's, Zimbabwe was in economic free fall." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 319]