What's not to like about a country in which, when you turn on the television in the middle of the day, you see "Sanford & Son"? And where the residents treat you like you're Fred's pal, Big Money Grip?

Both of those were my experiences when I landed in Zimbabwe to cover a trade mission by then North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt and other state leaders: After I tipped the woman who turned down my bed $2 -- which I later learned because of the exchange rate was worth way more than $2 there -- word spread that a generous American was in the hotel. The employees were solicitous of my every need, even anticipating some of them. I later discovered that it wasn't just the big money I was throwing around: Everyone I met in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, was friendly and welcoming. It sounds corny, but even though I'd never been there before, I felt at home.

That's why it's heartbreaking to see what is happening in that country now, as President Robert Mugabe seems intent upon running the country into the ground. Those $2 tips I was leaving in 1994 probably equal some people's weekly or monthly income today. The inflation rate is an incomprehensibly high 2.2 million, and inflation is so high that it's not even called inflation anymore. It's called hyperinflation and led to the country last week issuing a $100-billion note.

Sounds good, sure -- until you realize that note might get you a loaf of bread.

Walking down a dark street in the African country about 3 one morning, the only sounds dogs barking and music blaring from a radio in a bakery window, I'd never been so proud. I remember thinking, "Boy, if the folks in Rockingham could see me now!"

The next day, when I told one of the hotel workers about my nocturnal wanderings, he was aghast, and a look that can be described only as horror came over his face. Turns out, the route I took on my stroll was one favored by bandits who would rob and beat you for a loaf of bread.

No one bothered me, though, perhaps proving once again the adage that "God takes care of fools and babies." And I'm nobody's baby.

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TODAY, THE BANDITS AFTER YOUR $100-BILLION NOTE wouldn't be the only threat you'd need to look out for: Mugabe's thugs, the ones who turned the most recent election into a sham, have been reportedly attacking anyone who was not sufficiently, overtly loyal to their president.

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela and other African leaders had been reluctant to criticize Mugabe because Mugabe, as had they, had been a freedom fighter against white colonialism. Last month, though, Mandela who, like Mugabe, spent years in prison for opposing white rule, finally said there has been a "tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring Zimbabwe."

The abuses Mugabe suffered while in prison in Zimbabwe -- then called Rhodesia -- were, as is the inflation rate, incomprehensible: Cecil Rhodes, the diamond baron after whom the country was formerly named, would reportedly have the hands of African workers cut off if the workers didn't meet their production quota.

The atrocities suffered at the hands of whites, though, make those inflicted by a black-run government no less horrible. If anything, they make them worse.

Joshua Nkomo, who fought alongside Mugabe for independence, who spent 10 years in prison with him and who for a while shared leadership, eventually fled Zimbabwe lest he be assassinated by the megalomaniacal Mugabe's hit squads.

In his autobiography, Nkomo said "nothing in my life had prepared me for persecution at the hands of a government led by black Africans."

I'm guessing there is a countryful of Africans who feel the same way under Mugabe's dictatorship.

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