Metro
Mugabe turns 91, blows $1m on Birthday bash
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Saturday celebrated his 91st birthday with a million dollar bash attended by thousands of faithful party supporters.
The event was slammed by the opposition as “obscene” in a country wracked by poverty.
Thousands of supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF, many wearing party regalia emblazoned with the president’s image, sang and danced as he arrived for the jamboree at a luxury hotel in the famed Victoria Falls resort.
A number of elephants were slaughtered for the feast with seven huge cakes on display in one of the tents.
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, is the world’s oldest leader.
While he is hailed by many of his African peers as a liberation hero, critics say that over the following decades he turned the “breadbasket of southern Africa” into a basket case, trampling human rights, justice and democracy.
Mugabe’s violent seizure of white-owned farms triggered food shortages and hyper-inflation, while Europe and the United States imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe over elections seen as rigged.
– Ripples
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