February 22, 2007 10:09AM # Mugabe Eats Cake, Zimbabweans Eat… By [Thomas A. Firey](https://www.cato.org/people/thomas-firey) --- SHARE My Cato colleague [Marian Tupy](https://www.cato.org/people/tupy.html) is currently traveling in Africa and unable to blog, so I thought I’d post this snippet from [from a *New York Times* story](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/africa/22zimbabwe.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin) that would be dear to Marian’s heart: > JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 21 — President [Robert G. Mugabe](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/robert_mugabe/index.html?inline=nyt-per) of [Zimbabwe](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/zimbabwe/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) turned 83 on Wednesday to the strains of the song “God Bless President Mugabe” on state-controlled radio, along with an interview on state television, a 16-page paean to his rule in Harare’s daily newspaper and the prospect of a grand birthday party — costly enough to feed thousands of people for months, his critics argued — on Saturday. > > > Zimbabwe’s economy is so dire that bread vanished from store shelves across the country on Wednesday after bakeries shut down, saying government price controls were requiring them to sell loaves at a loss. The price controls are supposed to shield consumers from the nation’s rampant inflation, which now averages nearly 1,600 percent annually. Mugabe is a piece of work: Not only has his thugocracy destroyed the civil society necessary for a healthy nation and economy, not only has his monetary policy imploded the Zimbabwean currency, not only will history remember him as (in the words of Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu) a “caricature of an African dictator,” but he has the audacity to stage a phony national celebration of his birthday. Hat tip to the *NYT* for the great headline, photo, and endquote. [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).