Mugabe talks of own death as he marks 93rd birthday
matobo (Zimbabwe) — Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 93rd birthday with a lavish party on Saturday, addressing his own mortality in a speech, but showing no signs of stepping down.
Wearing a black cowboy hat, Mugabe, who is increasingly frail, paused for lengthy periods and mumbled at times as he spoke for more than an hour.
“It’s not always easy to predict that, although you are alive this year, you will be alive next year,” he said.
“It does not matter how healthy you might feel. The decision that you continue to live and enjoy life is that of one personality we call the Almighty God.
“We should thank the Almighty God that I was able to live from 92 years last year to 93, but much more than that I was able to live from childhood to this day — that’s a long, long journey.”
The birthday party, held in a large marquee outside Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo, was attended by thousands of officials and ZANU-PF party supporters.
Mugabe has held power since
We should thank the almighty God that I was able to live from 92 years last year to 93, but much more than that I was able to live from childhood to this day — that’s a long, long journey Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean President
1980 during a reign marked by repression of dissent, vote-rigging and the country’s sharp economic decline.
Now the world’s oldest national leader, his actual birthday on Tuesday has been honoured in a weeklong extravaganza with state media filled with tributes and praisae.
Saturday’s party included a feast and several vast birthday cakes, angering some Zimbabweans as the country endures severe food shortages. One of the cakes was shaped like Mugabe’s official MercedesBenz limousine.
Holding the event at a school in Matobo has also riled locals as it is close to where many victims of Mugabe’s crackdown on dissidents in the early 1980s are thought to be buried.
At least 20,000 people are believed to have been killed in the massacres by North Koreantrained Zimbabwean troops, according to rights groups.
“This should not be a place for celebration,” Mbuso Fuzwayo, spokesman for the Bulawayobased campaign group Ibhetshu Likazulu, told AFP.
“The whole area is a crime scene where the bones of victims of the massacres are buried.” The stateowned Herald newspaper on Tuesday published a 24-page supplement of gushing congratulatory messages from government departments and regime loyalists.
“It’s written on earth and in heaven that our leader is R.G. Mugabe,” ZANU-PF national youth leader Kudzai Chipanga told the president in his speech.
“We find it hard and impossible to talk about any other leader except yourself.”—