EU gave Mugabe a bigger birthday present this week

An obsequious local businessman has promised to slaughter a lion, a couple of elephants and other game to help Zimbabweans celebrate the 91st birthday of their president, Robert Mugabe.

But the EU probably gave him an even bigger birthday present this week when it renewed the travel and financial sanctions that have been in force against him and First Lady Grace Mugabe since 2002.

"It's the only excuse he has for the continuing shrinkage of the economy," said a veteran mining investment consultant in Harare.

Mugabe turned 91 on Saturday but his birthday party will be celebrated this coming Saturday at the Elephant Hills Golf resort at Zimbabwe's premier tourist destination, Victoria Falls.

The US still maintains similar restrictions as the EU, not only to the Mugabes but also to about 100 senior members of Zanu-PF. These provide Mugabe with another scapegoat to explain to his people why they are poorer now than they were 60 years ago.

Zanu-PF spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo, enormously grateful to survive the purge in Zanu-PF at its December congress last December, reacted predictably to the extension of the EU sanctions.

"These illegal sanctions have done nothing but destroy our economy. The country will continue with its indigenisation policy. If we need assistance, that assistance will come from our friends all over the world."

The EU and the US imposed the "smart" or targeted sanctions in 2002 because of alleged electoral fraud and human rights abuses. Over the last few years, the EU has eased those measures to encourage political reform in Zimbabwe, while keeping them on Mugabe and Grace. It has also maintained an arms embargo.

This week it gave the Zimbabwe government $270 million (R3.13 billion) in aid, the first direct aid to the government since sanctions were imposed.

The EU invited Mugabe to attend an EU-Africa summit in Brussels last April, but he stayed away because his wife was not invited.

And earlier this month, EU officials said Mugabe might be allowed into the EU on an exceptional basis during his year-long chairmanship of the AU, if travelling on AU business.

EU insiders have long said the pressure to maintain the last of what most member states now regard as "useless" or "silly" restrictions on Mugabe comes from Whitehall.

This week Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society in London, said: "To put it very bluntly, Mugabe has won," he said. "An immense amount of Western pressure to step down and reverse some of his policies and he's done neither.

"The fact that Zimbabwe has been ruined in the process and it's now just ministers, looting the place continually, I don't think that worries him," Dowden told AFP.

Mugabe is indeed personally better off than ever, celebrating 35 years in office this April and also honoured by his peers with the chairs of both the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the AU. Officially at least, he is not just a Zimbabwean hero but a continental one.

Meanwhile, it isn't only the economy that is shrinking in Zimbabwe. So is literacy, once a source of national pride. Mugabe's early efforts to expand the good education system he inherited are now a distant memory.

The brief recovery in education under the inclusive government which ended with Zanu-PF's return to sole power in 2013 is over.

But the sycophants of Zanu-PF are now planning to outdo each other in celebrating Mugabe's birthday this coming weekend.

Victoria Falls businessman Tendai Musasa, who is in a dispute with local residents over a hunting licence and land he claims near the Falls, told the Bulawayo Chronicle he would give Mugabe a lion's head as a trophy and would also shoot a couple of elephants and other game and give it to the Elephant Hills resort to cook for Mugabe's party.

But catering staff at the resort "venue only" were adamant on Friday that they can neither manage to refrigerate nor cook any jumbos.

In any event, economists say Mugabe's birthday comes amid the worst financial crisis Zimbabwe has faced. During hyperinflation, when Mugabe ordered quadrillions of Zimbabwe dollars printed, there was still one line of retreat - abandon the Zimbabwe dollar and adopt foreign currencies.

That is no longer an option. So, as he celebrates his birthday, Mugabe has nowhere to go for the cash he needs to rescue the economy he has destroyed.