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.