You know you have criminally mismanaged an economy when your inflation rate - the speed at which money becomes worthless - reaches 1,593 percent. Zimbabwe reached that dismal landmark in January, eclipsing the old record of 1,281 percent in December.

Food prices are said to be increasing even faster - at an annual rate of 3,000 percent - and anyone on a salary, like the country's 180,000 civil servants, is effectively impoverished. The buying power of their pay comes out to about $1.30 a day.

Zimbabwe was once an African success story, with a thriving private sector and mining industry. Thanks to its commercial farmers, most of them white colonists, it was not only self-sufficient in food, but a net exporter. The country is now an international charity case, dependent on food donations to feed its starving populace. Corruption and political repression are rampant. Politically motivated land seizures have effectively killed off commercial agriculture.

All this is due to one person, Robert Mugabe, the country's dictatorial president since 1980. His inflation-fighting program was to declare wage and price increases illegal. That drove the inflation rate to its present dizzy heights from a mere 400 percent. His latest tactic is to decree that no Zimbabwe banknote can be in a denomination greater than 1,000. That's the price - until it goes up again, as it surely will - of one tomato.

Despite all, Mugabe's sycophants are planning a gala celebration of his 83rd birthday on Feb. 21. And to do that, they are asking the Zimbabwean people to contribute 300 million Zimbabwe dollars for the festivities. Better hurry. By Feb. 21, that might not be enough to buy a cake.