(The Times) — If and when — and only when — a representative, internationally legitimate government has been installed in Zimbabwe, it will receive the support from donors and investors necessary for economic recovery to begin.

Zimbabwe today has one of the worst performing economies in the world. By the time of the elections on March 29, the inflation rate was estimated at 100000% a month, or nearly 275 % a day, a figure which makes the local currency essentially worthless.

But it is the human cost of the current crisis which defies comprehension. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is the lowest in the world: 37 years for men and 34 for women. In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, it is estimated that around two-thirds of the rural population and over half of their urban counterparts (totalling some 7.5 million people) could not meet basic food and non-food requirements. Unemployment is more than 75% and HIV/Aids afflicts one in five Zimbabweans.

A number of international and regional economic initiatives have been proposed to end the crisis in Zimbabwe. For example, the International Monetary Fund’s 2007 “fishmonger’s” plan centred on the rapid delivery of foreign aid, amounting to US3-billion over five years, targeting key areas such as food support, infrastructure and emergency aid.

But while donor aid can play a stabilising role, long-term, sustainable recovery depends on getting the private sector working once more and on making fundamental reforms in some critical areas.

Firstly, it will be important to rebuild the foundations of its once highly profitable commercial agriculture sector, which previously generated most of Zimbabwe’s foreign earnings, employed the largest number of people, produced the largest proportion of the commodities needed by other industrial and commercial businesses, was the largest customer for the transport, construction, insurance, financial, commercial and legal service providers, and gave rise to the bulk of the government’s tax revenues.

Secondly, the “land issue” is central to conditions and perceptions of governance and the rule of law in Zimbabwe. Clear policy on land is required as a key step in rebuilding domestic and foreign investor confidence in public institutions and practices. The inequitable, pre-1999 land dispensation can neither be reinstated, nor can the currently unsustainable situation, which has brought untold misery to millions of Zimbabweans, be tolerated. A balanced strategy involving reform, restitution and recapitalisation has to be devised for the land to realise its true commercial (and collateral) value.

A pragmatic and more equitable arrangement also calls for a systematic targeting of a small number of farmers previously engaged with large-scale farming and willing to return. Their knowledge and experience should be harnessed as part of a new contract between them and a select number of incumbents who have — by whatever means — taken up title to farmland. This new agreement should seek firstly to provide food security in Zimbabwe and, over time, to become a driving force of the country’s economic recovery, exploiting both its available skills and economies of scale.

The police force has ceased to be a national force and has become a party police force of Zanu-PF. In the judiciary, judges who found against Zanu-PF in the initial land cases have been marginalised and were eventually forced to resign if they did not heed government’s wishes. The military, too, has become an extension of the ruling party. Its powers and responsibilities have been directed towards protecting the party and suppressing any form of opposition.

A health warning: if Zimbabwe’s rate of economic decline has averaged more than 8% a year since 2000, it will take the same rate of growth for the same period to get back to the moment of decline.

Nonetheless, as has been learned from post-conflict situations including Ethiopia and Mozambique, a rapid bounce-back to respectable levels of income is possible if there is political normalisation and the reinstatement of market principles to the economy.

Dr Herbst is Provost at Miami University of Ohio and author of State Politics in Zimbabwe; Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation; Dr McNamee is with the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies based in Whitehall, London