{"id":193951,"date":"2016-02-28T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=193951"},"modified":"2016-02-28T06:00:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T06:00:14","slug":"robert-mugabes-lavish-92nd-birthday-party-criticised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=193951","title":{"rendered":"Robert Mugabe\u2019s ‘lavish’ 92nd birthday party criticised"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zimbabwe’s ruling party has been criticized for hosting lavish 92nd birthday celebrations for President Robert Mugabe while swathes of the population face food shortages.<\/p>\n

The event reportedly cost almost $800,000 (\u00a3575,000).<\/p>\n

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) called the celebrations “obscene”.<\/p>\n

Mr Mugabe has dominated Zimbabwe politics since independence from the UK in 1980.<\/p>\n

The event, which was televised and featured schoolchildren reading poetry about the president, was held in the drought-stricken south eastern city of Masvingo.<\/p>\n

Birth of a Mugabe dynasty?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The elderly leader, accompanied by his wife Grace, released 92 balloons to kick off the event at the Great Zimbabwe monument, with tens of thousands of people attending.<\/p>\n

In a speech, Mr Mugabe attacked Western donors, and said he would not accept “rotten, filthy” aid if it was contingent on Zimbabwe accepting same-sex marriages,the government-owned newspaper the Herald reported.<\/p>\n

But the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said the celebrations were “ill-conceived”.<\/p>\n

Money used for the event should be used to import maize “to avert the impending starvation” in Masvingo and other areas, said Obert Gutu, a MDC spokesman.<\/p>\n

\"Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe has asked for nearly $1.6 billion in food aid amid severe drought.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Mr
Mr Mugabe has not announced any plans to step down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eddie Cross, an MP for the MDC said: “The obscenity of this particular exercise is that he throws this bash not just based on public funds… but he does it in one of the worst-affected drought-stricken parts of the country.”<\/p>\n

The UN’s World Food Programme said food production had fallen by half compared to a year earlier, because of severe drought.<\/p>\n

The government said about three million people were food insecure and earlier this month it asked for nearly $1.6 billion in aid.<\/p>\n

Mr Gutu said the ruling Zanu-PF “should be utterly ashamed” for hosting the costly celebration while “more than 90 %of Zimbabweans are wallowing in grinding poverty”.<\/p>\n

However, a youth leader for the ruling Zanu-PF party defended the birthday celebrations.<\/p>\n

“Money is not the issue here,” Pupurai Togarepi told the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n

“You cannot put a price on the contribution of President Mugabe to the history and development of this nation. All these things are worth more than money.”<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe has faced severe economic challenges in recent years, which critics blame on policies including the seizures and redistribution of white-owned farms in 2000.<\/p>\n

Hyper-inflation left its currency worthless and required the use of foreign currencies for most transactions.<\/p>\n

Mr Mugabe has blamed his country’s economic troubles on Western meddling.<\/p>\n

Who is Robert Mugabe?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Veteran leader Robert Mugabe has presided over Zimbabwe for the past three decades.<\/p>\n

Born in 1924 in the village of Kutama, south-west of the capital Harare, he was educated by Jesuits and went on to become a teacher before joining the liberation struggle against British rule.<\/p>\n

He became a key figure in the fight for independence from white minority-rule as leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, and spent 11 years in prison before becoming Zimbabwe’s first post-independence prime minister in 1980.<\/p>\n

In December 2015, Mr Mugabe was endorsed once more as the ruling party candidate for the 2018 presidential elections but media continue to speculate about a potential successor.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zimbabwe’s ruling party has been criticized for hosting lavish 92nd birthday celebrations for President Robert Mugabe while swathes of the population face food shortages. The event reportedly cost almost $800,000 (\u00a3575,000). The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) called the celebrations “obscene”. Mr Mugabe has dominated Zimbabwe politics since independence from the UK in 1980. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":193953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/193953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}