"Hell on Earth" in Zimbabwe

Author Alexandra Fuller grew up in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia, where her family still lives. She now resides in Wyoming with her husband and three children. Fuller is the author of three works of non-fiction, including the memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. On the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Declaration of Universal Human Rights, she reflects on the disease devastating her former home of Zimbabwe.
If it was President Robert Mugabe's intention to organize hell on Earth, he has succeeded. It's December in Zimbabwe, and that means the rains are frequent and the sun is at its hottest. The harvest—predicted to be ridiculously inadequate—is half a year away. Electricity is sporadic. No garbage has been collected for months. There has been no running water in many cities for days. Zimbabwe is a steam-bath of infection. Cholera, that most medieval of diseases, and the ultimate indication of a state that has failed her people, is rampant. Violence spills over. I follow every new development because those are my people, in that hell.