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Unhappy Birthday
Robert Mugabe makes it to 83. Ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe can count themselves lucky if they live half as long
Today, Zimbabwe's president Mugabe celebrates his 83rd birthday. The leader plans a birthday celebration, where selected children will come to greet the president and enjoy what is, by Zimbabwean terms, an enormously extravagant party.
British papers report that the party will cost around £30,000 in real terms: Not an excessive sum for a head of state's celebration. In Zimbabwe terms, however, it is difficult to tell. One quoted figure is 30 million Zimbabwe dollars, but as the inflation rate of 1600 percent makes many household essentials double in price overnight. The average Zimbabwean worker needs to toil two months to be able to pay for enough maize to feed his family for a month. By the time those two months are up, however, it's likely that the price of maize will have become even more inaccessible.
Mugabe is lucky to reach such an advanced age. Doctors report he is still healthy and sprightly. If only the same could be said for his fellow citizens.
Zimbabwe now has the lowest life expectancy ratings in the world.
The World Health Association puts life expectancy for Zimbabwe's women at 34; men can expect to live to 37.
HIV and AIDS has devastated Zimbabwe, but Mugabe's policies have turned a tragedy into a disaster of epic proportions.
Unfortunately for the people of Zimbabwe, there is little they can do to end their plight. Mugabe's troops break up protests with tear gas and baton charges; on Tuesday, the government moved to ban all rallies except those linked to bye-elections. While new elections are planned for 2008, Robert Mugabe is trying to postpone them until 2010 (Mugabe is great friends with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: Doubtless the men spent much time discussing means of bypassing their respective nations' constitutional laws).
The international community can do little. For many African leaders (some no mean abusers of privilege themselves), Mugabe is owed a debt of respect for his opposition to colonialism which outweighs his later crimes against his people. African leaders boycott meetings to which Mugabe is not invited. EU leaders, wary of the colonial symbolism of holding talks on Africa which no Africans attend, are divided on how to handle Mugabe.
Indeed, so timid is the west that mention of Zimbabwe's wealth prior to Mugabe's late-90s campaign of destruction is thought of as bad form, as it suggests that colonial ways epitomised by the white farmers the president drove out provided a better model than the current one.
The EU renewed its travel ban on Zimbabwe's leaders, but with no sign of Mugabe's demise, has no idea what to do next. France promotes "dialogue" - Britain calls for tougher action.
When the west is indecisive, more cynical actors are quick to take advantage of our fear of offending delicate developing world sensibilities. So, we learn from the EU Referendum Blog that the seven African countries on the board of the UN's World Food Programme favour offering Zimbabwe the vice-presidency of the organisation. The vice-presidency is usually a path to the presidency the following year.
We could be in the mind-bogglingly surreal situation of having Zimbabwe - a nation that was once known as the "breadbasket of Africa", now one of the poorest in the world - holding the presidency of the world's biggest food aid provider.
Zimbabwe as president of the World Food Programme? Surely the most absurd UN move since the US was booted off the Human Rights Commission in May 2001 when Libya, Syria and Sudan held seats. Incidentally, Zimbabwe currently sits on the Human Rights Commission, so let's not hear any arguments that inviting offenders onto the boards somehow house-trains them.
