Zimbabwean President talks of death at 93rd birthday party

MATOBO

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 93rd birthday with a lavish party on Saturday, addressing his own mortality in a speech but showing no signs of stepping down.

Wearing a black cowboy hat, President Mugabe, who is increasingly frail, paused for lengthy periods and mumbled at times as he spoke for more than an hour.

“It’s not always easy to predict that, although you are alive this year, you will be alive next year,” said President Mugabe. “It does not matter how healthy you might feel.

“The decision that you continue to live and enjoy life is that of one personality we call the Almighty God.

“We should thank the Almighty God that I was able to live from 92 years last year to 93, but much more than that I was able to live from childhood to this day — that’s a long, long journey.”

The birthday party, held in a large marquee outside Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo, was attended by thousands of officials and Zanu-PF party supporters.

President Mugabe has held power since 1980 during a reign marked by repression of dissent, vote-rigging and the country’s sharp economic decline. Now the world’s oldest national leader, his actual birthday on Tuesday has been honoured in a week-long extravaganza with state media filled with tributes and praise.

Saturday’s party included a feast and several vast birthday cakes, angering some Zimbabweans as the country endures severe food shortages. One of the cakes was shaped like the president’s official Mercedes Benz limousine.

Holding the event at a school in Matobo has also riled locals as it is close to where many victims of President Mugabe’s crackdown on dissidents in the early 1980s are thought to be buried.

PRESIDENT FELT LONELY

Left with one sibling, the president said there were times when he felt lonely after having lost many of his siblings, but reckoned that perhaps he could have been given a long running mandate by God.  

“When I look back, I say, aah, Oh Lord, why have these (siblings) been taken before me and why have I remained so long alone and alive?” the president said. Turning to politics, the president spoke on divisions in his party over succession and reiterated that people should not canvass for positions but should let the people choose them.

“The party is based on a party constitution and the party constitution provides how people get elected from one position to another. So why want to try to circumvent the constitution?” the president said.

His party has in recent years been rocked by intense infighting by factions vying to succeed him, one reportedly led by Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa and another by a younger generation of leaders going by the name G40. Both factions deny the accusations. President Mugabe warned the “ambitious” leaders that they would never succeed in toppling him.

NOT READY TO STEP DOWN

He recently said he was not ready to step down and would not groom a successor as that was the responsibility of the people. Zanu-PF has endorsed him as the party’s presidential candidate for the 2018 elections when he will be 94. 

He said even as some people within his party continue to call for his resignation, he would only step down when his party says so.

The veteran ruler said he would not impose a party leader, as that would be in violation of the party constitution.

“I don’t want to choose a leader for the party,” said President Mugabe. “I only choose my two Vice-Presidents (Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko) and the issue about my successor that is a constitutional issue, an issue of the party congress.”

He told party members to wait for the 2019 Zanu-PF elective congress to deal with the succession issue, and indicated that his successor must be a person of impeccable credentials and a principled leader who would not reverse some of the gains of the country’s liberation struggle including the land reform programme.

President Mugabe’s wife Grace Mugabe also addressed the gathering and said her husband’s 93rd birthday was a milestone. She hailed President Mugabe as a loving husband, exemplary father, statesman and iconic and great leader of Africa.

“He is everything to the downtrodden of this world.’’