What do you do after turning Africa's breadbasket into Africa's basketcase, where the latest estimate puts inflation at 231 million percent, where unemployment currently stands at 94 percent, where over 6 million people are currently starving, where 1 in 10 children will die before the age of 5, where the life expectancy of men is 37 and women is 34, where a raging cholera outbreak has sickened 80,000 and killed over 3,700 people over the past 6 months, where the loser of last year's election held onto the presidency solely by killing and torturing supporters of his opponent, and where the newly appointed Agriculture Minister, Roy Bennett, was just arrested last week, charged with treason / terrorism / whatever they'll think of next, and locked away in an infamous torture prison?
If you're Zimbabwe's 'President' Robert Mugabe, you throw yourself a $100,000 feast of which Marie Antoinette would have been proud...
More below the fold...
More than 100,000 US dollars is expected to be spent on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's 85th birthday party next week - while more than half his country's population lives in dire poverty.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is currently at 231 Million Percent -
Grim estimates show that Zimbabwe's humanitarian situation is worse than anticipated with just 6 per cent of the population employed, while nearly 7 million need emergency aid, UN agencies said.
The latest stark illustration of the once-vibrant economy's collapse came hours before acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that Zimbabweans can now legally use foreign currencies alongside the Zimbabwe dollar.
Unemployment in Zimbabwe currently stands at 94 percent, and Zimbabwe's current raging cholera outbreak has so far sickened 80,000 and killed over 3,700 -
GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 80,000 people have now been infected with cholera in Zimbabwe's six-month-old outbreak which has killed 3,759, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
[...]
The intestinal infection spreads through contaminated food and water and can cause severe dehydration and death without proper treatment. While cholera is both preventable and treatable, an economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe has caused the near-collapse of health services.
And in the midst of all this, again, 'President' Robert Mugabe and his sick minions will be enjoying a $100,000 feast -
More than 100,000 US dollars is expected to be spent on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's 85th birthday party next week - while more than half his country's population lives in dire poverty.
Meanwhile, on that same day across the rest of the country, millions of Zimbabweans will be subsisting mostly upon sadza, the same nutritionally bankrupt, imported, highly-processed cornmeal porridge they subsist on every day, if they can get anything to eat at all.
Here's to the day (which can't come soon enough) that Robert Mugabe is no longer making life a living hell for the good and proud people of Zimbabwe.
If only they had oil or something, eh?