Elephant

A presidential birthday is almost always celebrated in style. Large parties, amazing food, grandiose cakes and plenty of revelry are the standard package for most world leaders. However, if you’re the 91-year-old dictator of Zimbabwe, you eat a zoo.

This is what happened when Robert Mugabe rang in his birthday at the luxurious Elephant Hills Resort, a lodge located near Victoria Falls. Around 20,000 people attended, singing the praises of Mugabe, while his guests feasted on everything from baby elephant to impala.

That’s right, one young elephant, two buffalo, five impala and two sables were brought to the feast as a gift from a local land owner. A crocodile and lion were also killed, stuffed and presented to Mugabe. And another elephant was said to be on the chopping block to be presented for the local Victoria Falls community.

Conservationists immediately decried the slaughter, saying, “We are disgusted about this. Mugabe once gave a speech on television saying he looks after all the animals in the country, right down to the insects. There are so many people starving in Zimbabwe and the people invited to the party will not be those who are starving.”

The festivities, which included cakes the size of mattresses, some of the nation’s top performers, and adulation by children from his ZANU-PF party’s youth wing (singing songs about their dear leader of course) cost Mugabe about $1million to fund.

Opposition groups in Zimbabwe have quickly pointed out that this money could be better spent on poverty stricken Zimbabweans. According to the World Bank, about 70 percent of Zimbabweans live in poverty and the life expectancy-rate comes in at just 58 years of age. Malnutrition is at epidemic proportions in the country where, according to Reliefweb, it “currently accounts for 25 percent of deaths among children under the age of five.”

The icing on the cake of Mugabe’s hypocrisy came from excerpts of his 90 minute speech. While feasting on endangered wildlife, and enjoying the stuffed lion carcass bestowed upon him, Mugabe told the crowd that the United States must be held accountable for the wildlife they slaughter in Zimbabwe. “They [The USA] can’t say ‘allow our people to visit, allow our people to have safaris,’ to kill our lions and take safari trophies to America.”

He was also quoted by the AP as saying, “Zimbabwe has lots of safaris, but very few are African…Most are white-owned. In our region, we have the most safaris and animals. But we are not going to invade those forests”

The landowner who donated the animals for the feast has been quoted as saying the young elephant he killed was an aggressive one that would have caused problems in the local farming community. He also mentioned that the lion was ‘old’ and because of the nature of lion prides, would soon be ousted from his group and be of little use to nature. It should also be noted that neither of these two statements were backed up by conservation scientists.

Mugabe was first elected president of Zimbabwe in 1987, he’s been ruling the country ever since. This year he was given the chairmanship of the African Union and he has been quoted in numerous interviews saying that he plans to run again, in 2018, at the age of 94.