Let them eat cake
Robert Mugabe turns 86 next week.
We know this because the Zanu-PF youth wing has begun looking for the cash to throw the big party.
And also because the state broadcaster has started its traditional countdown: before any news bulletin, the announcer reminds us how many more days are left before we all burst into wild celebration to mark the birth of the “Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, who is also First Secretary and President of Zanu-PF”—the title by which Mugabe goes on radio and TV, without fail, just so nobody is in doubt as to who exactly is in charge in these parts.
Civil servants are striking over their measly US$150 (R1 140) salary and large parts of the country face a drought, described this week by Morgan Tsvangirai as a “catastrophe”.
So a lavish party looks bad. Which is why organiser Anywhere Mutambudzi refuses to say how much will be spent.
Last year, though, the party did say it would spend US$300 000.
The money is raised in many ways, one of which involves visits to businesses and farms to ask, in Zanu-PF’s usual friendly way, for kind donations.
Critics are also reminded that this is more than just some ordinary birthday party.
What is certain is the standard fare that has come with the 21st February Movement for three decades. There are the fawning press adverts from ministers, state companies and anyone who has any real hopes of a political future. The contest is on to apply the greasiest praise.
Last year the defence ministry took the prize, calling Mugabe “the great crocodile”.
That beat other, less original, contenders—like the already widely accepted fact that Mugabe is the country’s last bastion against imperialism and that Britain and her Western cohorts tremble in his wake.
Then the day itself, when thousands of youths play communist-pretend in red scarves, while birthday boy, also in a red scarf, peers from behind a monster cake and sways to fawning odes to his Gushungo clan name. Then his family cuts up the cake and lets them eat cake—at least, those in the VIP tent.
