Guardian.co.uk
David Smith in Johannesburg
Tuesday 16 February
Opponents condemn proposals to mark Zimbabwean president’s 86th birthday as unemployment reaches nine in 10
Plans to hold a lavish all-night birthday party for the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, were today condemned as insensitive to the suffering of the country’s people.
Mugabe’s 86th birthday will be celebrated next week with an “extravagant overnight gala” starring local and international musicians, the Zimbabwe Times reported.
The paper said Anywhere Mutambudzi, a retired army major who is an official with the information ministry, would organise the event – being held in Bulawayo – which would run from 6pm on 26 February until 6am the following day.
It quoted Mutambudzi as telling state television: “The gala will feature all major local, as well as some foreign, musicians from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.”
Mugabe, whose birthday is on 21 February, shows no signs of slowing down or willingness to relinquish power to Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), his rival in Zimbabwe’s unity government.
Opponents criticised the party plans at a time when Zimbabwe’s teachers are on strike over pay and around nine in 10 people are unemployed.
Simba Makoni, a former senior member of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, said: “I’m not aware of the source of the money, but I suspect that state resources will be funnelled to this event improperly.
“If they use state funds for a private citizen’s birthday when basic services are starved of funding, it would be the worst degree of insensitivity and disregard for the needs of the people of Zimbabwe.
“It would be an act of gross negligence and incompetence … no competent state would do such a thing.”
David Coltart, the education minister in the power-sharing government, said: “If this is private money, it’s none of my business.
“However, if it’s government money then it’s better spent on school textbooks.”
Coltart, a member of the MDC, added that “all the most flamboyant displays of wealth are inappropriate” at a time when government spending on education was paltry.
Raymond Majongwe, the secretary general of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, said he did not object to the celebration in principle but added that an extravagant cost would “not be in order” when the union’s members were being forced to take industrial action.
Since 1986, Mugabe’s birthday celebrations have been organised by a Zanu-PF youth group called the 21 February Movement, initially modelled on scouting and aimed at promoting children’s rights.
Last year, the president celebrated his 85th birthday with a week of parties costing hundreds of thousands of US dollars.
The events included a banquet, a gala dinner, a public feast and a concert at which dozens of animals were slaughtered.
More pomp and ceremony is expected for the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in April – also signifying Mugabe’s 30 years in power.
The MDC said last week that fresh elections may be needed after the latest efforts to end deadlock with Mugabe in the one-year-old unity government ended in failure.