Zimbabwe is $11 billion in loan arrears, it just lost a
hoped-for bailout from China, and the southern-tier African nation is
now grappling with the fallout of floods and the breach of a dam weeks
ago that left 60,000 people marooned.
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| President Robert Mugabe (center l.), his wife Grace, daughter Bona, and her fiance Sam Chikoore cut his birthday cake during celebrations to mark his 90th Birthday in Marondera about 100 kilometers east of Harare, February, 23, 2014. |
Since it no longer qualifies for World Bank and IMF loans, the Mugabe
regime is pleading around the world for $20 million in emergency funds
to cover the disaster.
Yet it also now unfolds that President Mugabe used $16 million in
taxpayer funds in recent weeks to cover his birthday party, his
daughter’s wedding, and for giant statues of himself to be built by
North Korea that commemorate his uninterrupted rule since 1980, and his
status as father of the nation.
The Mugabe spending list, which dribbled out in recent days — has
shocked many, since public spending on the president’s family is larger
than the immediate cost to rescue and aid the flood victims, not to
mention a widening number of homeless and hungry in a country that used
to be a breadbasket.
The appearance of excess has brought a new grassroots grumbling at
the gap between the original liberation ideology of Mugabe and his
behavior today.
The spending surfaced at a time when reports of Mugabe ministers
salaries, some of which top $40,000 a month, are in contrast with the
average salary of Zimbabweans, at $285-$300 a month, and just after a
plan to raise teacher’s pay by $79 a month fell through.
Mugabe’s 90th birthday bash on Feb. 23, for example, where the
president cut a cake in front of 10,000 people at a stadium in Harare,
and where 90 beasts were killed and grilled for the occasion, cost more
than $1 million.
The cost of Bona Mugabe’s wedding on March 1, attended by the heads
of state of South Africa, Zambia, and Equatorial Guinea at Mugabe’s
private home in Harare’s plush Borrowdale suburb, cost $5 million.
Just after the wedding, plans leaked out that Mugabe’s Zanu (PF)
government clandestinely signed North Korea, one of its old friends, to
build two statues of Mugabe at an estimated cost of $5 million.
The statues were commissioned by Zimbabwe’s minister of local government, Ignatius Chombo.
One is a nearly 30-foot high bronze image worth $3.5 million to be
placed in Harare; the other is a $1.5 million version to be placed in a
$3.8 million museum to be built in Mugabe’s rural Zvimba home, in
Mashonaland West.
Building statues of leaders is something North Korea has considerable experience doing.
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