Corruption & despair choke Zimbabwe: it was once one of Africa's most prosperous countries. But five years after its government began seizing white-owned farms, Zimbabwe's economy is in ruins.

Edson used to be a foreman on a farm 40 miles south of Harare, Zimbabwe s capital. "They came to us and said, 'You have 10 minutes to leave this farm.' Ten minutes, that's it," says the 29-year-old black man, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used. "We lost all our money, all our property--everything." Since then, he says, the 600-acre tract has lain fallow.

It's a scene that has been repeated thousands of times across Zimbabwe. Since 1998, the government of President Robert G. Mugabe and his followers have confiscated 25,000 square miles of white-owned farmland in the name of compensating black Zimbabweans for a century of British and white rule, but also in an effort to revive Mugabe's fading popularity. All but about 600 of 4,500 white farmers have been kicked off their land. As a result, nearly 300,000 black farmworkers have been uprooted. Most are now jobless, and many of the farms lie fallow.

Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, was one of Africa's most prosperous nations. But the land seizures have sent agriculture, the country's mainstay, into precipitous decline and the economy into a tailspin. Now Zimbabwe is in desperate shape, suffering from famine and choked by ever-tighter government restrictions on not only the economy, but on basic freedoms as well.

Mugabe, 79, a leader of Zimbabwe's independence movement, has been the country's only ruler since independence in 1980, first as Prime Minister and then as President since 1987. He was re-elected in March 2002, in elections considered a sham by his political opponents, foreign observers and the U.S. Since then, all opposition media have been shut down and foreign journalists expelled.

"This country is truly in a crisis," says Collen Gwiyo of the Zimbabwe Coalition of Trade Unions, which opposes Mugabe's government. "It's a political crisis, leading to an economic crisis, feeding a humanitarian disaster."

FOOD SHORTAGES

In a nation that exported beef and wheat only three years ago, 4 million people--one third of the population--now rely on foreign food donations. Forty percent of Zimbabwe's children are now suffering from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. Foreign investment has vanished, and only 1 in 10 workers now holds a steady job.

"I haven't had a job in two years--nobody here has a job," says a 27 year-old man in a suburb of Harare.

Desperate citizens here have become dark-of-night scavengers of coffins, copper electrical cable and even aluminum street signs. In Harare, downtown streetlights are turned off for lack of foreign currency to pay South African and Zambian power suppliers. The ravages of hyperinflation, 455 percent a year and rising, are everywhere: 500 Zimbabwean dollars are worth about 8 American cents; five years ago, they were worth 9 American dollars.

Mugabe's 'allies, critics here and abroad say, are scooping up Zimbabwe's wealth. They have taken control of the best farmland and game parks and channeled billions of Zimbabwean dollars in government spending through companies they or their relatives own.

WILDLIFE ALSO SUFFER

Hunting and tourism once pumped millions of dollars into Zimbabwe's economy each year, sustaining wildlife management programs on millions of acres of private scrubland too and or rocky for commercial farming, but ideal for safaris and big-game hunting.

Now, thousands of hungry families have turned to poaching the wildlife for food and income. In the country's national parks, large animals are dying of dehydration because there is no money to run water pumps. Two thirds of the animals on Zimbabwe's game farms and wildlife conservancies may have already been wiped out.

The government blames a drought for this year's disastrous harvests. The drought has hurt, but many foreign observers and Zimbabweans alike blame the government for the country's woes. Many of the confiscated white farms have not been redistributed to black farmers; they have been given to Mugabe backers who have let much of the land lie fallow. And the farm seizures ended up undermining the rest of the economy as well: With property rights no longer assured, foreign investment has dried up.

Without foreign currency, Zimbabwe can no longer import the fertilizer, spare parts and gasoline needed to sustain its agriculture. Corn production has fallen by nearly half from its peak. Harvests of wheat, a profitable commercial crop, are down by 90 percent.

A white farmer who had land confiscated says of those enriching themselves: "They're making their own bed to sleep in. But I tell you what: They're going to starve there."

Michael Wines is a correspondent for The New York Times based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He recently spent 11 days in Zimbabwe.