Happy Birthday, Mr President

Reports this week that the usual lavish birthday extravaganza is being arranged for President Robert Mugabe’s 86^th birthday come as no great shock. Every year the President’s birthday is marked with an embarrassingly unashamed outpouring of pomp and circumstance accompanied by sycophantic fawning among the political elite, paid for by siphoned public funds and coerced contributions from the private sector.

The 21^st February youth movement was established in the mid 1980s to mark the occasion. Members are groomed to follow their parents' rise in the president’s hardline political party, ZANU PF. The (government-controlled) media publishes special supplements depicting Mugabe as a national hero and lavishing praise on all his deeds, notably repelling the British colonials and all their perceived allies and friends - Americans, Ozzies, etc.

The “Old Man” appears fit and healthy, and he clearly has no intention of relaxing his iron fist. Rumour has it that he meets all new ambassadors and dignitaries on the steps of State House, which he runs up, two at a time, to demonstrate his prowess. The diplomatic corps also reportedly refer to him as "Botox Bob" because he has a youthful countenance which occasionally collapses if he’s left it too long between injections.

Clearly he is a lot healthier than his country, thanks to the disastrous land reform programme, and the continued raping of the economy by Bob and his cronies. The economy is in tatters, and recovery is seriously threatened by the indigenisation bill which Mugabe unilaterally gazetted last week, requiring a minimum of 51% of all businesses operating in the country to be handed over to indigenous Zimbabweans. Life expectancy at birth for males was 60 in 1990, and has now declined dramatically to 37, the lowest life expectancy in the world. It’s worse for women: their life expectancy at birth of only 34 years. Over 90% of the population is unemployed, millions have fled the country, teachers and civil servants are striking over their paltry wages and over two million people are starving.

Official birthday celebrations are being ramped up this year to include an all night gala featuring local and international artists. The location for this extravaganza is Bulawayo, ironic as it is the city nearest where the Gukurahundi killings took place in the 1980s, during which roughly 3000 people were killed or disappeared at the hands of the fearsome 5^th Brigade, under the command of the Old Man himself.

It may be the twilight of his political career, but from where I sit, it still seems that cunning old Bob, and his cohorts, have a firm grip of all the aces. Yes some things have improved for some people in Zimbabwe, but for the majority, the future still looks bleak.

I’m not the only one in Harare tonight who feels desperate, angry, depressed, sad – and emotionally wrought out. Like a thin wire stretched to breaking point.

We’ve been through a lot in the last ten years, how much more suffering can this country endure?

Laugh for fear of crying

You have to keep your sense of humour in order to negotiate Zimbabwe’s crazy operating environment these days. People are dying in droves, from cholera, from hunger, from neglect - we have had no government for nine months and no elected government for years, and now it looks like the Old Man is orchestrating a State of Emergency to unleash more repression and fear. The rest of the world, preoccupied with their own (very minor, when compared to Zim's) economic setbacks, and are certainly not going to intervene in a small country with no notable mineral reserves.

Let’s face it, life here is not all that funny, but who wants to listen to a whinging Pom, as Zimbos like to call us. (Can’t imagine why of course!)

Hence I like to keep this blog light. If you can keep your sense of humour, find joy in small things – for example, I find great comfort in a cup of tea – then you can cope with pretty much everything life throws at you.

I lost my sense of humour for a while, hence this blog went silent for a few months. Luckily I found it the other day, hiding in the back of a cupboard, next to a pile of odd socks. (A topic for another blog, another day). And now, more than ever, I think it’s important to be able to enjoy the small things, see humour in the ridiculous things we do to keep going, help as many Zimbabweans as possible to survive and prosper, and not to succumb to misery.

The “Old Man” wants all foreigners and whiteys out of the country. Africa for the Africans. (By the way, I am the only one in three generations of my family born outside Africa – will that never count for anything?) If that happens, who will speak up for Zimbabweans? OK, I am not an elected representative. And of course I’m privileged and undeniably white. But I’m still here, still doing my bit, pathetic though it may seem. I could have given up long ago, and moved elsewhere, but I love this place too much.

Well, that’s something to really laugh at isn’t it – how many Zimbabweans want to live in the West, while Westerners want to live in Africa. How’s that for delicious irony? A Zimbabwean would say that that paradox is absolutely "classical" - and I agree.