Despite costly birthday bash, Mugabe's policies earn gratitude
Zimbabwean repays president for land reforms with game for leader's 91st birthday banquet
When Zimbabwean game farmer Tendai Musasa speaks about his president, Robert Mugabe, his voice softens with joyful pride.
At a giant party in Victoria Falls yesterday to celebrate Mugabe's 91st birthday, the 20,000 guests feasted on elephant meat donated by Musasa, who pledged to slaughter two of the beasts.
One young bull elephant, shot on Thursday, has been cut to pieces and conveyed to the organisers of the feast. A second, yet to be killed, will be handed out to members of the community.
Musasa said his main motive for donating the elephants, as well as a lion trophy, a crocodile trophy and a small herd of live impala, was gratitude.
He is a beneficiary of Mugabe's land-reform policy, a programme that saw white farmers ousted from their holdings without compensation after 2000.
"We regard him as our father," he said of the world's oldest leader, who has been in power for 35 years. "Our provider, our hero. We regard him as a very courageous man."
The lion and a crocodile are to be stuffed as trophies. He said there was a strong cultural obligation for Victoria Falls to thank Mugabe for celebrating his birthday in the town.
Thousands of supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF sang and danced as he arrived for the jamboree at the luxury hotel.
Assisted by his wife Grace, the elderly liberation leader threw 91 balloons into the air.
Addressing the gathering in a 90-minute speech, Mugabe castigated the US which has imposed sanctions on both Zimbabwe and him personally.
"They (the US) can't have it both ways, if they want to be friends then they must be friends with us in total and we allow them to have some safaris," he said.
"But they can't say 'allow our people to visit, allow our people to have safaris, to kill our lions and take safari trophies to America'," he added.
The extravagance of Mugabe's birthday parties are a subject of annual controversy in Zimbabwe.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change called yesterday's festivities "obscene".
"All the money that has been collected to bankroll this obscene jamboree should be immediately channelled towards rehabilitating collapsed public hospitals, clinics and rural schools," MDC spokesman Obert Gutu said.
