The emperor has new clones

IT turns out that Mugabe's latest stroke of economic genius – Operation Dzikisa Mitengo - is not very original.
It appears he has cloned an idea first used back in AD 301, by some Roman emperor called Diocletian.
Faced with hyperinflation, Diocletian ordered that merchants halve their prices. He then set maximum prices for a range of basic goods. Death awaited those that defied the decree.
A succession of Roman emperors, each eager to have their own mug stamped on coins, had minted coins with abandon. This was worsened by what one account says were “politically motivated confiscations of property”.
And, eager to buy loyalty, Diocletian minted more coins. This stoked hyperinflation and confidence in the currency plunged.
After a series of attempted reforms – including changing the currency – the emperor finally stood on top of the highest available pedestal and proclaimed what has come to be known as the “Edict on Maximum Prices”.
This order, after cutting prices by half, slapped a price cap on over a thousand goods – from sausages to lions. But instead of taming inflation as hoped, the controls only managed to drive goods onto the black market and create shortages.
Merchants - your Roman version of Spar and some such modern day sneaky usurpers - were blamed for the inflation. And, get this, those that criticised the move were accused of working, as they say in Zimbabwe today, “in cahoots” with the Barbarians, tribes opposed to the emperor.
Threatened with death – they had a variety of interesting methods of execution then, if you watch movies – the merchants were also forbidden to trade elsewhere at higher prices.
However, the Edict did not end the crisis, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins continued to drive inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were set too low.
Merchants either stopped production, turned to the black market, or switched to barter.
There a few of the Roman parallels that President Robert Mugabe should perhaps worry about; the shortages that have already begun to bite, and the inevitable fact that Zimbabwe’s more prosperous neighbours will be shaking their heads as they watch the neighbourhood bum rummaging through the bins.
But it is Diocletian’s fate, following his crackdown, that is intriguing.
After his price cuts failed, the emperor lost power, and was banished to the margins of the empire, from where he grew cabbages for the remainder of his life.
And so Mugabe's opponents wait...