I am holding a placard to my head advocating a ban on birthday bashes. This is more necessary if the birthday baby is a politician, a leader, or an old man. Their birthday parties are a public danger and should remain a private affair outside public consumption if they must be celebrated.
President Mugabe’s 85th birthday celebration comes across as the cruelest joke of humankind. I mean, in a country where half the population are starving to death, cannot pay their medical bills, and have given up on the prayer: ‘Give us today our daily food,’ how deep is the irony that the president should spend 250,000 US dollars on his birthday cake and drinks?
Comic relief comes with the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, appealing to donors and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for aid. I think Africa’s richest humor comes from the Zimbabweans. They make the worst-case scenario look like a circus show. But the point is made. I am thinking that if so much money can be raised for a bad cause, there is more money to be raised for a good cause. Spending a fortune on the president’s birthday when millions are perishing in sickness and poverty is a huge waste. I think there should be a ban against birthdays, however well intentioned they may be.
I remember reading about good old Mandela’s 85th birthday, stolen in the name of commerce. Andile Mngxitama wrote in Pambazuka News, “Mandela’s 85th birthday was a Coca Cola affair. The multinational corporation was given full rights to throw a party for our founding father. Coke milked his name dry, everything was branded, serviettes to programme—the whole affair was televised live. This forced a friend to remark that we need another ‘Free Nelson Mandela Campaign.’ ”
Back in Zim, as the global economic crunch continues, it pays to be a friend of Mugabe at his lavish birthday party! The World Food Program recently reported that an estimated 6.9 million people without food in Zimbabwe. What remains a puzzle, however, is the love-hate syndrome that the nation’s people have for Mugabe. According to Agence France-Presse, Mugabe’s supporters helped raise money for the bash. “Crowds arrived in lorries, singing songs in praise of Mugabe, while banners proclaimed him a ‘great leader who never lets his people down.’ ” This reminds me a lot of George Orwell’s classic novella Animal Farm. The ZANU party and all the people who participated in Mugabe’s bash are like Minimus, the poetic pig who writes praise songs about Mugabe—oops, sorry, about Napoleon—and the banal patriotic song that replaces the idealistic anthem, Beasts of England.
It is unfortunate that people pay so little attention to literature, the one thing that remains true in its portrayal of human behavior. How the pigs commission praise songs for themselves and claim to deserve better than the others, their anthem-changing and amendment of the Seven Commandments not different from the constitution-changing that has become the shame of many of our political leaders allowing themselves privileges and dictatorial rule. For this reason I am holding a placard before the pigs drink all the whisky, dine at tables and relish sumptuous meals while the rest of the folks are robbed of their dignity and are dying from starvation.
