PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s endlessly proclaimed illusion of Zimbabwean democracy, prosperity and health and education for all reached its most surreal extreme at a party held yesterday costing 300m Zimbabwe dollars to celebrate his 83rd birthday.

This sum would have been worth £150,000 when officials of the ruling Zanu-PF began collecting for the event in December, but by this weekend it was down to £23,000, so fast is the currency falling in value.

Mugabe mingled with the 20,000 guests in the Mboka football stadium in the city of Gweru and used a lengthy speech to condemn homosexuality. The party was shown on national tele-vision, although viewers in Harare suffered a power cut.

Mugabe accused Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, of waging economic sabotage with the help of the British. “Their efforts will come to nought because we have the support of the people,” he declared. “Even if he [Tsvangirai] denounces us from the top of a mountain or appeals for foreign intervention from there, we are not going to fall.”

The celebrations were disrupted by strong winds and rain from Cyclone Favio. But giant cakes had been baked and thousands of children wearing red sashes were bussed in to the stadium where, according to the state-controlled Herald newspaper, they would “interact with political leaders and role models that would inspire them to serve their country with decorum”.

The “role models” turned up in an array of luxury vehicles. They were the same party officials whom Mugabe, in a rare moment of realism, had described in an interview last week as ambitious, corrupt cheats trying to drive him out.

The party was held as bread disappeared from shops, inflation was forecast by the International Monetary Fund to rise to 4,000% by the end of the year and demonstrations and political gatherings were banned by the police in Harare for fear that they would trigger looting.

“The president has lost touch with the people,” said Wellington Chibebe, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), who was assaulted by police for being part of a small protest in Harare last September. “What he is doing is throwing a party at a funeral.”

One of the unexpected side effects of Zimbabwe’s 1,600% inflation is that people who bring their dying relatives to hospital are simply disappearing.

Families deliberately give fictitious names and addresses because they cannot afford the fees for the hospital, undertakers and burial sites. So the country’s mortuaries are choked with unclaimed dead.

“The Shona people in many ways have a culture of the dead,” said Father Oskar Wermter, a Jesuit priest who spends most of his life among the desperately poor residents of Harare’s Mbare township. “But now, because of the economic breakdown and social disruption, these things are happening.”

Every morning, before Wermter gets to the gates of the St Peter Claver parish house, the knot of supplicants begins to swell: desperate, anxious people pleading for money for rent, education, clothing and medication.

“There are a few charitable things associated with this birthday party, but it is another propaganda occasion to try and convince the people everything is wonderful and he is doing wonderful things for the people,” said Wermter. “I cannot make out the psychology of that man.”

Among the achievements in 27 years of what the Herald calls Mugabe’s “sublime, visionary leadership”, are infant mortality as bad as Somalia’s; one of the highest postnatal maternal mortality rates; the highest inflation anywhere; the fastest economic decline in a state not at war; and a place at or near the bottom of international indices for corruption and press freedom.

The latest evidence of the descent into dystopia comes from an unpublished report by psychiatric experts which shows that 40% of people in and around Mbare suffer from chronic depression and anxiety.

“It means that nearly one in two people in the street is severely psychologically disabled,” said one of the doctors involved. “So when people accuse Zimbabweans of being apathetic and not standing up to the government, this is why.”

This weekend the general council of the ZCTU was discussing whether the government’s stalling over wage demands from doctors, teachers and civil servants, most of whose salaries barely cover their transport to and from work, merited a national strike. Last week the government sent riot police into schools in Harare where teachers were in their classrooms but refusing to teach. The police attacked them with dogs, batons and tear gas, witnesses said.

The recent discovery of diamond deposits in Marange has added a twist to the succession battle raging within Zanu-PF. A power struggle between Solomon Mujuru, former army chief and the biggest landowner — whose wife Joyce is Mugabe’s deputy — and the president broke into the open last week.

Khupukile Investments, Mujuru’s company, owns a large share of the diamond field. Last Tuesday Mugabe announced that the mines were being nationalised. As so often in Africa, control of the mines has come down to a trial of political and military strength. If Mujuru wants to defend his position he must stage a coup or force Mugabe to back off. But the ageing president cannot afford to back down — any sign that his writ no longer runs could be fatal to his regime.

“There is a new mood in this country,” said a western diplomat. “When people can’t afford the cost of transport to go to work, let alone eat or pay the rent, and that includes much of the army and police, the government becomes very vulnerable.

“Mugabe can’t go on printing money ad nauseam. Things could change very quickly in the next few months.”

Facts of failure

Inflation 1,600%

Unemployment 80%

Population living on less than £1 a day 80%

Gross domestic product down 30% in five years

Life expectancy (men) 37 years

Life expectancy (women) 34 years

Infant mortality 60 per thousand live births

HIV/Aids one in five adults infected

(Sources: IMF, Dfid, Unesco, UNaids)

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