By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Last
Saturday (February 21, 2015), President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
for 35 years – since 1980 when the country gained independence from Britain
 |
Supported by wife, Grace, and children, Mugabe cuts his 91st Birthday Cake on 28 February 2015 at Elephant Hills, Victoria Falls |
For many years now, Mugabe’s birthday bash has become a big,
lavish event in Zimbabwe Victoria Falls .”
The ceremony is estimated to cost about
US$1million (one million dollars) and part of the money is being sourced from
the citizens. There were even reports that some impoverished villagers are also
being compelled to “freely donate” money so that Mugabe could have his big
party. Zimbabwe ’s Daily
News quotes the head of the Progressive Teachers’ Union ,
Mr. Raymond Majongwe, as saying that teachers all over the country are being forced
to part with between one to ten dollars (depending on the status of the school
where one is teaching) to fund the very expensive feast. This has however, been
denied by Tongai Kasukuwere, the Finance Secretary of the ruling Zanu-PF’s
Youth League who urged anyone “being forced to donate to the gala [to]
report to the police.”
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has, however, dismissed Mugabe’s birthday party as an “obscene jamboree.”
“As the MDC, we are greatly perturbed to learn that
instead of focusing on more serious and pressing national issues such as
rehabilitating the country’s collapsed public health delivery system as well as
the renovation of the nation’s dilapidated road and rail infrastructure, Zanu-PF
has seen it fit to squeeze the sum of US$I million from the country’s ailing
business sector in order to bankroll the nonagenarian’s birthday jamboree in the
resort town of Victoria Falls…The majority of the people of Zimbabwe are living
in penury, squalor and destitution, and thus, it would be grossly offensive for
Robert Mugabe and a few of his hangers – on to wine and dine…on Saturday,
February 28, 2015,” MDC spokesman, Obert Chaurura Gutu, said in a
statement in Harare.
 |
If indeed Mugabe is having his birthday party on Saturday
as scheduled, would move without some help from his car to his seat and freely
acknowledge greetings from the 22, 000 selected guests expected at the
ceremony, then it means that he has had a remarkably quick recovery from the
fall he experienced recently. On February 4, Mugabe had tripped on a red carpeted staircase and came
crashing down to the ground on his hands and knees as he descended a podium at
the Harare International Airport after addressing a crowd of supporters that had
come to welcome him on his return from Addis Ababa, where he had just been made
the new Chair of the African Union (AU).
There were fears that given his age,
it would take quite some time before his doctors and physiotherapists would certify
him fit for public activity given the predictable effect of such a fall on his
knees and ankle bones. But, surprisingly, Mugabe was able to attend the meeting of the Southern African Development Community in Pretoria
“I'm very happy to be
that age,” he said. “I am happy that God has looked after me."
In His Own Words Interview With President Robert Mugabe At 91
Another
exciting news for the nonagenarian is the return of his 49-year-old dear wife,
closest ally and “power behind the throne,” Grace Mugabe, from Singapore
But
the biggest news for Mugabe this season may, perhaps, be what is now being
described in the media as his “victory” over the West, especially, the European
Union (EU), which announced two weeks ago that it has resumed direct aid to Zimbabwe Britain ,
and the United States of
trying to achieve what he calls a “regime change” in Zimbabwe
 |
Mugabe receives a gift at his party. Beside him is his wife, Grace (pix: yahoonews) |
Now
that the EU is relaxing its sanctions without confirming any conviction that any
improvements have been recorded on Mugabe’s poor human rights records,
corruption and anti-democratic actions, which it had always cited as reasons
for those sanctions, analysts across the world would be left wondering if the
EU is not being driven by enlightened self interest to undertake this
self-deprecating somersault?
In
2012, when the EU first announced its intention to relax the sanctions, a
reader on a South African news site posted this comment:
“The British Government does not act out of
charity. It is scrapping sanctions on Mugabe because Britain
needs Mugabe more than Mugabe needs Britain Zimbabwe UK
It is obvious that Mugabe
will now get away with all his alleged dismal human rights records because the
West does not wish to lose out in the big contest for Zimbabwe ’s rich minerals where the East Asian
countries have already used the period of the pariah status placed on Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
by South Africa
Cutting yet another cake with wife Grace (pix:abc)
Yet, Mugabe and his
Zanu-PF stalwarts are not even celebrating the EU gestures, thus aggravating
the embarrassing situation the EU has presently found itself.
"To put it very bluntly
Mugabe has won," Richard Dowden, director of the London-based Royal African
Society was quoted as saying. There has been an “immense amount of Western pressure” on Mugabe, “to step down and reverse some of his
policies – and he's done neither," he said. And yet the EU is lifting
sanctions on his government and resuming direct aid.
So, it will be a triumphant Mugabe that would roll out the drums
and bite into a rich, delicious piece of cake this Saturday as he celebrates
his 91st birthday. And without mincing words, he would tell his
people: Now, it should be clear to you that I have been right all along and the
West was wrong. While Mugabe savours his double celebration, it is up to the Zimbabweans
to decide how long more they would be able to tolerate him, and possible, his
wife.
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*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye is a columnist with Daily Independent newspaper. He has written extensively on Zimbabwe and President Mugabe.
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