MATOBO: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 93rd birthday with a lavish party on Saturday, addressing his own mortality in a speech, but showing no signs of stepping down.

Mugabe, who is increasingly frail, paused for lengthy periods and mumbled at times as he spoke for more than an hour. “It’s not always easy to predict that, although you are alive this year, you will be alive next year,” he said.

“We should thank the Almighty God that I was able to live from 92 years last year to 93, but much more than that I was able to live from childhood to this day — that’s a long, long journey.”

The birthday party, held in a large marquee outside Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo, was attended by thousands of officials and ZANU-PF party supporters.

Mugabe has held power since 1980 during a reign marked by repression of dissent, vote-rigging and the country’s sharp economic decline.

Now the world’s oldest national leader, his actual birthday on Tuesday has been honoured in a week-long extravaganza with state media filled with tributes and praise.

Saturday’s party included a feast and several vast birthday cakes, angering some Zimbabweans as the country endures severe food shortages. One of the cakes was shaped like Mugabe’s official Mercedes-Benz limousine.

Holding the event at a school in Matobo has also riled locals as it is close to where many victims of Mugabe’s crackdown on dissidents in the early 1980s are thought to be buried.

At least 20,000 people are believed to have been killed in the massacres by North Korean-trained Zimbabwean troops, according to rights groups.

“This should not be a place for celebration,” said Mbuso Fuzwayo, spokesman for the Bulawayo-based campaign group Ibhetshu Likazulu.

Mugabe cut the cakes with the help of his wife Grace as the crowd sang Happy Birthday.

Born on Feb 21, 1924, Mugabe trained as a teacher and taught in what was then Rhodesia and Ghana before returning home to join the guerrilla war against white-minority rule. He became prime minister on Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980 and then president in 1987. All schools around Bulawayo were closed on Thursday and Friday to prepare for the celebration, which was attended by some ambassadors and foreign dignitaries.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2017