Mugabe tells party-goers: to hell with gays and western ways

ZIMBABWE’S president Robert Mugabe ended a week of celebrations for his 88th birthday with a lavish party at which he urged young Zimbabweans to shun western values, homosexuality and greed.

Hosting a party in the eastern city of Mutare, Mugabe – who has ruled the country for more than 30 years with his Zanu-PF party – attacked some African leaders for becoming “weak and naive” and thinking only of material gains when “kneeling” to westerners.

Zanu-PF organisers said around 20,000 people gathered at a Mutare sports stadium for his annual birthday bash targeting the nation’s youth.

A cake baked in Harare was taken to Mutare under police escort, and livestock were slaughtered for the event.

Regional Mugabe party official Charles Samuriwo didn’t comment on estimates that the tab for the occasion had reached nearly £600,000. He said that businesses made “sufficient” donations and “no-one will go back home on an empty stomach”.

In a nationwide broadcast of the event, Mugabe said it was up to the young to “carry the torch in the future” and maintain a high standard of moral and sexual behaviour. He said that unacceptable western values included same-sex marriages.

“We reject that outright and say to hell with you,” he said. “You are free as a man to marry a woman and that is what we follow. That’s what produced you and me. This kind of insanity is now part of the culture” of Europe and the United States, he added.

Mugabe told Zimbabwe’s young that the fight against western influence still had to be fought.

“You must go to the head of the imperialist and knock out his brain,” he said, also cautioning them against “any love for money than is greater than your political conscience”.

In nearly four hours of birthday broadcasts this week, Mugabe said he would call elections this year to end a shaky coalition government with former opposition prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai, who was not in Mutare, insisted on Friday that elections can only be held next year after constitutional and election reforms have been completed.

Mugabe said those opposing early polls “know they will lose if we go to elections this year”.

Tsvangirai earlier described the three-year coalition with Mugabe, formed after disputed and violent elections in 2008, as a “painful and sorrowful experience” and said he would “resist” elections this year.

He said Mugabe wasn’t to be trusted in power-sharing as “we have a president who indicates left and turns right”.

Mugabe, whose birthday fell on Tuesday, said he had been showered with gifts, blessings and prayers from home and abroad, and that support from his countrymen “warms my heart and invigorates me”.