Emmanuel Fundira, the chairman of the fund-raising group, says that the theme of this year’s celebration will be “empowerment, prosperity and peace.” In Harare, however, some citizens were caustic in their assessment of the festivities.

“The guy is insensitive,” John Shiri, 41, a teacher at a primary school, told a local journalist. “There is no bread as we are talking, but he will be feasting and drinking with his family and hangers-on when there is no wheat in the country.”

Zimbabwe teachers earn a basic salary of 84,000 Zimbabwe dollars a month, plus limited allowances. The Central Statistical Office said last week that a family of five needed more than 566,000 Zimbabwe dollars, or about $123, to buy a month’s worth of basic commodities.

Tawanda Mujuru, who runs a vegetable stall on Samora Machel Avenue in downtown Harare, said that she would be working in a factory if not for the failure of Mr. Mugabe’s economic policies.

“He has the guts to eat and drink when we are suffering like this,” she said. “Let him enjoy. Every dog has his day. We shall have our day

One of Africa's remaining despots!Guy's a nuisance and unfortunately the African Union has not sactioned him. So much for their peer review mechanism!

Sorry full article!
Mugabe Gets Ready to Eat Cake While Fellow Zimbabweans Can’t Find Bread on Shelves
Desmond Kwande/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images
President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe held 83 balloons, one for each year, at a birthday ceremony Wednesday in Harare.

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By MICHAEL WINES
Published: February 22, 2007
JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 21 — President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe turned 83 on Wednesday to the strains of the song “God Bless President Mugabe” on state-controlled radio, along with an interview on state television, a 16-page paean to his rule in Harare’s daily newspaper and the prospect of a grand birthday party — costly enough to feed thousands of people for months, his critics argued — on Saturday.

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Associated Press
Mr. Mugabe, with his wife, Grace, toasted his birthday and had cake.
Zimbabwe’s economy is so dire that bread vanished from store shelves across the country on Wednesday after bakeries shut down, saying government price controls were requiring them to sell loaves at a loss. The price controls are supposed to shield consumers from the nation’s rampant inflation, which now averages nearly 1,600 percent annually.

In Harare, the capital, the police banned demonstrations and political gatherings in the city’s sprawling townships on Wednesday, citing the threat of looting and vandalism. Slum dwellers clashed with policemen on Sunday after the police blocked a court-approved rally by political opponents of Mr. Mugabe.

His critics called the ban an act of desperation, and some said that Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis was beginning to goad citizens into political action despite the threat of arrest and beating.

“It’s a sign of panicking by the regime,” Lovemore Madhuku, who leads the nation’s largest civic organization, the National Constitutional Assembly, said in a telephone interview from Harare. “It’s also a signal that this regime will go down fighting. They’re showing that they will continue to rely on brute force to stay in power.”

In his hourlong television interview, broadcast Tuesday evening, Mr. Mugabe showed no sign of concern that he was unpopular. Rather, he expressed confidence that voters would add another six-year term to the 27 years he has spent in power should he run for re-election.

He has proposed postponing the next presidential election, now scheduled for 2008, until 2010, and he mocked the ambitions of underlings who, he said, hoped to push him from office before he was ready to retire.

“Can you see any vacancies?” he asked. “The door is closed.”

On Wednesday, The Herald, the state-managed newspaper, included in 16 pages of tributes to Mr. Mugabe an editorial calling him “an unparalleled visionary” and “an international hero among the oppressed and poor.”

The 21st February Movement, founded as a youth welfare organization in 1986, said it had raised 300 million Zimbabwe dollars — about $65,000 at black-market currency rates — from the public for Mr. Mugabe’s birthday party. The event, to be held in Gweru, Zimbabwe’s third largest city, is to feature a parade of specially chosen children delivering birthday greetings.

Emmanuel Fundira, the chairman of the fund-raising group, says that the theme of this year’s celebration will be “empowerment, prosperity and peace.” In Harare, however, some citizens were caustic in their assessment of the festivities.

“The guy is insensitive,” John Shiri, 41, a teacher at a primary school, told a local journalist. “There is no bread as we are talking, but he will be feasting and drinking with his family and hangers-on when there is no wheat in the country.”

Zimbabwe teachers earn a basic salary of 84,000 Zimbabwe dollars a month, plus limited allowances. The Central Statistical Office said last week that a family of five needed more than 566,000 Zimbabwe dollars, or about $123, to buy a month’s worth of basic commodities.

Tawanda Mujuru, who runs a vegetable stall on Samora Machel Avenue in downtown Harare, said that she would be working in a factory if not for the failure of Mr. Mugabe’s economic policies.

“He has the guts to eat and drink when we are suffering like this,” she said. “Let him enjoy. Every dog has his day. We shall have our day.”

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Mugabe did some good for Nigeria. He sent all the white farmers away from Zim ad Nigeria invited them here.

The guy is schizo,obviously so!Shame on the continent,people like him lived in the stone age.

Zimbabweans Like him though. Alot, of Zims agree with him!!

The same Zims that are now struggling to buy bread?

the man mugabe should resign and hand over power to a good leader that will move zimbabwe forward cos he has lost focus and is totally out of ideas.

So when the western press potrays Africa as a land of hungry,ignorant,diseased folks,should we complain!People have no food, live in slums,yet he deems it fit to celebrate 83 years of pestilence.One day!

No probs, if he refuses to leave, he'll die in office

Let us forget the role the West has to play in Zimbabwe's misery via economic sanctions. What crime did the man commit? He decided to take back land that the West took by force. Let's keep deceiving ourselves, Mugabe has been in power for decades, why now that he initiated land reforms is Zimbabwe suffering?

If you want to see how the West can destroy a place, look at Haiti. What crime did Haitians commit? They decided to fight for independence and end slavery. Up until today, Haiti is still suffering from that and France (the main culprit) in all of this does nothing to help other than protect brutal dictators like Papa and Baby Doc.

Let's not learn from history, let's swallow whatever the Western Media tells us. Mugabe wasn't a beast until he decided that land reforms was necessary, then he became a member of the axis of evil.

The problem in Zim transcends land reforms!Mugabe is simple incapable of ruling and it shows that without aid the country can't survive because the economic factors are not there!Haiti is not in Africa and it's the retrogressive policy of the USA not France here to keep their backyard perpetually in a comatose state viz a viz the Carribean and Latin America.Anyways it's Africa we are concerned about the especially the unimaginable apathy,want,hunger and despair in Zim!It's rather shameful and must we always cry wolf at imaginary foes like the ape is doing?The man practically ran his country aground and mind you this was a former freedom fighter in his hey days a la Kenneth Kaunda,Julius Nyere,Samora Machel,Jonas Savimbi,Sam Njuoma etc!It's rather shameful that the man could turn into a degenerate overnight!

More!
Anger mounts in Zimbabwe as crisis nears By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 23, 2:01 PM ET



JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe is reaching the end game, witnessing the last, desperate throes of a regime that has destroyed one of Africa's few successful economies, plunged millions of people into grinding poverty and led to the deaths of tens of thousands from malnutrition and lack of medical care.

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It may not happen Saturday, when President Robert Mugabe celebrates his 83rd birthday with cake and champagne at a $1.2 million party while hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans struggle to survive on bread and water.

And it probably won't happen in the weeks leading up to April 18, the 27th anniversary of an end to racist white rule and Mugabe's ascension to power.

But years of abuse and neglect are culminating in untenable crises.

"People's anger is mounting," said Zimbabwean political scientist John Makumbe. "They're no longer afraid to go into the streets and I think the government is growing very afraid of what may happen."

The world's worst hyperinflation is spiraling out of control, bringing shortages of food, fuel, medication and electricity. Police have banned demonstrations in opposition strongholds in the capital, Harare, for three months. And criticism is mounting within Mugabe's ruling party, which is divided over who will succeed him and when.

"Each and every individual on the upper echelons" is jockeying for his position, Mugabe complained in an interview on his actual birthday, Wednesday, broadcast over the country's sole and state-owned television station.

But, he announced categorically: "There are no vacancies because I am still there."

Mugabe blames sanctions, drought and former colonizer Britain for the collapse of an economy based on exports of a wealth of agricultural and mineral products.

Others blame land grabs over the past several years in which Mugabe encouraged blacks to violently force out most of the 5,000 white commercial farmers who owned 40 percent of all agricultural land and produced 75 percent of agricultural output.

White farmers had employed the country's largest work force and their ejection led to the displacement of 300,000 families. The farms, most given to Mugabe relatives, allies and cronies, lie fallow today and Zimbabwe does not have the foreign currency to import food.

The World Bank estimates it would take more than 20 years for Zimbabwe's economy to return to levels in 1980, when the country was considered the breadbasket of the region.

The ban on protests followed weekend clashes in which police fired tear gas and turned water cannon on opposition rallies. The opposition had planned to protest the high cost of living and Mugabe's plan to extend his term to 2010.

Mugabe is "at war" with its people, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai declared this week.

The National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition of human rights, church and grass-roots organizations, issued a statement Friday criticizing the police action.

"It's not a crime to defend oneself from an unlawful attack, and if need be (people) should protect themselves from a partisan, violent police force that aims at perpetuating dictatorship and increasing the suffering of the ordinary masses," the statement said.

Meanwhile, people are finding it increasingly difficult just to survive.

The rate of hyperinflation — running at near 1,600 percent — that economists say soon will be represented by an upright line on a graph has the country in revolt. The number of Zimbabwe dollars that bought a three-bedroom house with a swimming pool and tennis court in 1990 will buy a brick today.

A lifetime public worker's monthly pension can't buy a loaf of bread. Charities have reported depression, suicide and malnutrition among retirees — including a type of vitamin deficiency affecting gums, bones and hair loss.

A hairdresser paid the minimum monthly wage of $30,000 Zimbabwe dollars said her bus fare to work cost more than her salary but she went anyway to get the tips from clients that keep her and her daughter alive.

The list of deserters on the walls of army barracks grows ever longer despite a 300 percent pay raise in January, which fell short of the military's demand of a 1,000 percent increase. The police chief in Harare has said in a confidential memo that he fears his constables will riot.

Doctors and nurses have been on strike since December and the rest of the civil service is threatening to join them.

Makumbe, the political scientist, said an estimated 70,000 people have died this year because there are no drugs in hospitals and medical equipment like dialysis machines doesn't work any more.

He said one 16-year-old boy who broke his collar bone falling out of a tree has lain at home in pain for days because his widowed mother does not have the million Zimbabwe dollars needed to have the bone set.

Bread disappeared off the shelves this week after the government increased the price of grain sold to millers by 10,000 percent but did not raise the controlled price for bread. Water shortages have caused a cholera epidemic that has killed dozens since November, medical officials said.

Children have been among the first to suffer, with one in four Zimbabwean children orphaned and more than 2 million at risk of starvation, the U.N. Children's Fund said.

The government has tried to control inflation by printing money and setting the exchange rate. Last year, when half a dozen eggs cost more than a million Zimbabwe dollars and the poorest Zimbabweans were millionaires, the government simply knocked three zeros off the currency. The minimum monthly salary for a house cleaner went from $15 million to $15,000 Zimbabwe dollars. The official exchange rate is set at 250 Zimbabwe dollars to one U.S. dollar, but the real trading rate is 5,000 to one.

Some Zimbabweans are getting rich off the misery. Party and government officials with access to foreign currency buy it at the official rate and then resell it at the real rate, making a huge profit.

God almighty,ain't that genocide

Mugabe is obviously an incapable leader but so are many other leaders around the world. Besides, he was strongly supported by the west till he introduced the land reform programme

The great difference here is that this man decided to stand up against an injustice without thinking through the merits and demerits of same. These problems came to fore when he decided to take back Zimbabwean lands.

The lands were taken unjustly but he was expected to allow that injustice continue for the sake of the aid that was being recieved from the west. The west pulled the plugs on the aid and Zimbabwe faced problems.

It's the same thing they do to any Nation that does not dance to their tune. Any wonder they are always willing to kill and do anything to ensure that they have total control over the rest of the world?

Mugabe is obviously an incapable leader but so are many other leaders around the world.

I wonder why you are defending an obviously incapable leader? Shouldn't you rather be defending capable leaders?

The great difference here is that this man decided to stand up against an injustice

There's nothing 'just' about a dictator, he was trying to score cheap support for his unjust rule

without thinking through the merits and demerits of same.

That is precisely what we are saying. Why should you impose a policy without thinking about its demerits?

These problems came to fore when he decided to take back Zimbabwean lands.

The problems were there before he seized those lands, but they only got worse when he added fuel to fire.

The lands were taken unjustly

Spare me the bullshit; do you think a dictator cares about justice? Perhaps you should interview all those who have been killed or jailed for opposing his unjust rule and ask them what they think about Mugabe's "justice".

but he was expected to allow that injustice continue

If you have a knowledge of history, you'll realise that almost every land we have today was taken unjustly at a point. The ancient Israelites, muslims in the north, Americans, all took their lands 'unjustly' in the past. So what? It's just history. Must northern muslims vacate their lands for the descendants of the people originally living there? Must Americans vacate the US for the native Indians they took it from? Such thinking is retrogressive!

for the sake of the aid that was being recieved from the west

If he was not such a bad ruler, his country would be able to survive without aid. The West doesn't owe him any aid! Foreign aid is a gift that comes with stringent conditions. If you refuse to satisfy them, they take it. Justly.

It's the same thing they do to any Nation that does not dance to their tune.

When CNN didn't dance to Nigeria's tune, the president discontinued business with them. Justly. The right not to deal with people whose actions are not paying you is the priviledge of every free person or nation!

Any wonder they are always willing to kill and do anything to ensure that they have total control over the rest of the world?

I wonder why they didn't kill Robert Mugabe. Maybe its because his economic illiteracy is already doing that for them?

Donzman:

Let us forget the role the West has to play in Zimbabwe's misery via economic sanctions. What crime did the man commit? He decided to take back land that the West took by force. Let's keep deceiving ourselves, Mugabe has been in power for decades, why now that he initiated land reforms is Zimbabwe suffering?

If you want to see how the West can destroy a place, look at Haiti. What crime did Haitians commit? They decided to fight for independence and end slavery. Up until today, Haiti is still suffering from that and France (the main culprit) in all of this does nothing to help other than protect brutal dictators like Papa and Baby Doc.

Let's not learn from history, let's swallow whatever the Western Media tells us. Mugabe wasn't a beast until he decided that land reforms was necessary, then he became a member of the axis of evil.

Who said africans are a bunch of illiterates? Thanks Donzman for proving otherwise.
Zimbabwe's problems are more than just Mugabe. When African's recognize the Beast that is their true enemy then Africa and African shall truly be free.
Look at every country on this planet that has a majority of its population black and rule by a black government. The problems are basically the same. Shallow blacks will say "its because of a black leader". I ask you to think again. Don't let them progam you into believing and buying into "mental Slavery"

Look at every country on this planet that has a majority of its population black and rule by a black government. The problems are basically the same.

Last time I checked, Nigeria and South Africa did not have 1600% inflation. We are doing much better.

All this support for Mugabe on this forum is hopelessly misguided.You hear the usuall "it is us against them".

Here is a country that was a net exporter of food and one of Africa's leading economies reduced to a basket case with part of the population surviving on food aid.The ostensible aim of the land policy was black empowerment but now many Zimbabweans now have to live on Western food aid.Any reasonable person will see that this is not black empowerment but black disempowerment.

It does not surprise me to see people defending Mugabe.Anytime a leader defines himself as the antidote to Western imperialism,the knee jerk reaction of many Africans is to line up in support.

It might surprise you now but many Ugandans will tell you that when they were  explaining to other Africans that Idi Amin was a very bad leader many Africans continued to defend him.

Thanks to Robert Mugabe, even the poorest of Zimbabweans are millionaires!

When a people can no longer afford to eat bread then there is cause for alarm.

its easy to identify the ancestors of those who sold their brothers in slavery
the gene is alive and well.

here Nobility speaks.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

@phoenixman

You need a reality check

Look at the responses of people like phoenixman and Dozman. You'll agree that it is hard not to see why Africa is where it is today. Only we Africans will defend someone who is killing us because that person "stands up to the white man". Only Africans. Is it any wonder that Africa is the definition of third world?

@Mariory

Good point.Many people see every issue through the prism of anti-imperialism.While the people of Zimbabwe starve,they are getting poetical.

When we attack Mugabe,we are referred to as Western apologists.Perhaps all those Zimbabweans who are campaigning against Mugabe,are all Western apologists.

Journalists,union leaders,opposition politicians,students,human rights activists e.t.c who have all been the victims of the Mugabe regime are all Western apologists who do not appreciate that the starvation of their own people is for a good cause.Let them starve so we can poke the whiteman in the eye.

When Mugabe conducted the massacre in Matabele land(5,000 civilians) the victims instead of complaining should have realised that we have to show the whiteman we can survive on our own.

A Zimbabwean told me that prices of foodstuffs increase on a monthly basis and in some cases on a weekly basis.As Davidylan said,in Zimbabwe everyone is now a millonaire

I dont know why AFRICA is blessed with leaders with expiered ideas such as MUGABE, i really dont know why. Anyway, every country with her own problems we are still battling with ours and only God knows the out come!

I have no regard for Mugabe. His wife, has already been banned from travelling to some EU countries, on account of her spendthrift shopping sprees abroad. Mugabe is a classic example of Acton's famous slogan, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". He had literally plunged his country into an abyss, settling scores with some people by seizing their land, and ignoring the plight of the common man. What happened to Mugabe of the early 80's, when Zimbabwe was awashed in prosperity under his regime when he was married to his Ghanian born wife, Sally Mugabe?

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/shopper.1156.html

Indeed GRACE Mugabe is a DISGRACE to Zimbabwe as a nation

Mugabe did his people a great service by reallocating land to his people, but he has done nothing else for them, instead people have to carry a bag of cash just to buy a litre of milk, that's if they have any money to begin with, the guy should just hand over to the opposition leader

Mugabe did his people a great service by reallocating land to his people,

Brother, Mugabes land reallocation policy was just to confuse the people to vote for him but in reality he has not reallocted anyland to the people. Rober has actually ROBBED his people.

Donmikky, rephrase your earlier discourse. It is not blessed, but cursed.