He shall eat cake. The 83rd birthday festivities on Saturday of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe will be a grand affair, with the finest food and drink, and lavish celebrations, in the manner to which the Most Consistent and Authentic Revolutionary Leader has become accustomed. The cost, in hard currency terms, will be £30,000. Now you might think this would present something of a problem. It is hard, after all, to overstate the economic crisis in which Zimbabwe is mired. It has a 1600% inflation rate, the world’s highest. On one day this week, Tuesday, the price of bread rose 136%, meaning that it costs the average person a week’s wages to pay for one loaf. Some 80% of Zimbabweans are unemployed. Shelves are empty. Discontent is so widespread that even the government’s own police officers, traditionally kept sweet by enhanced pay, are deserting in the face of intolerably low wages. All this has certainly created something of a challenge. But there’s always a way. This time, reports suggest, it involved summarily deducting money from civil servants’ already paltry wages and strong-arming near-bankrupt local businesses into ‘donating’ money. For the harried, overburdened people of Zimbabwe, this latest show […]