The economy of Zimbabwe is collapsing due to the policies of its President for Life Robert Mugabe.

In another sign of the turmoil, the government rejected a ruling by a regional court that demanded Zimbabwe stop seizing land from white farmers.

The government instead will speed up efforts to take land remaining in whites farmers' hands and redistribute it to black subsistence farmers, lands minister Didymus Mutasa said, according to the state-controlled newspaper, The Herald.

President Robert Mugabe's often-violent land reform has forced thousands of white farmers off prime agricultural land since 2000 and triggered a food crisis from a slump in farm production.

The Southern African Development Community's tribunal ruled Zimbabwe should allow 78 white commercial farmers to keep their farms, which had been targeted for expropriation. The Namibia-based court also said Zimbabwe should pay compensation to three farmers who already lost their land.

The tribunal, set up by 14 countries including Zimbabwe, can hear appeals from citizens but does not have power to enforce its rulings.

Zimbabwe once boasted one of Africa's most vibrant economies, with good health care and infrastructure built up after Mugabe won the first democratic elections in 1980. But the economy has collapsed since Mugabe began seizing white farmland in 2000, with runaway hyperinflation, mass unemployment and shortages of most major commodities, including gasoline and food.

Some 5.5 million Zimbabweans -- half the population -- face imminent starvation due to the food crisis that resulted from Mugabe's land redistribution, the United Nations says.

A cholera epidemic has killed hundreds across the country, and an anthrax outbreak has claimed three lives.

Meanwhile, the country's sewage and water facilities have collapsed, hospitals have closed and garbage has gone uncollected.

The government says cholera has killed 425 people and sickened more than 11,000 since August.

Harare, at the center of the epidemic, was without water Monday, after the state utility ran out of chemicals to treat the supply, The Herald reported.

Anthrax has killed two children and one adult in western Zimbabwe, and is threatening to wipe out at least 60,000 livestock, according to the British charity Save the Children. It said starvation was forcing people to eat infected meat.

Mugabe is one of those who hates capital and proclaims his love for labor. No worries there. Capital has fled Zimbabwe (why stay where you are hated?) and labor is dying in the streets. Mugabe may have the dialectic down pat but materialism is fleeing.

This may have a good effect for the rest of Africa because it will teach them that a socialist economy is ultimately a death trap. If they are wise enough to learn.

Cross Posted at Power and Control