Tired Mugabe gets emotional

Source: Tired Mugabe gets emotional – DailyNews Live

Blessings Mashaya      27 February 2017

HARARE – President Robert Mugabe showed both his advanced age and  human
side when he told thousands of Zanu PF supporters who gathered in Matobo
at the weekend for his 93rd birthday celebrations how the deaths of his
parents and siblings had left him feeling very lonely.

While most thankful to his creator for his long life, Mugabe went down
memory lane, revealing how over the years death had robbed him of members
of his family, including his sisters.

“I thank the Almighty God that I was able to live from 92 last year to 93
this year.

“That’s a long journey. It’s a long journey to have walked, a journey with
its own joys, displeasures, its own sorrows.

“The joys are those when mother, father and you are still together, your
brothers and sisters are still together with you. And the sorrows are
those that arise through missing these. I have missed them.

“I have just one sister left by my father’s second wife, Regina. When I
look back I say Oh Lord, why were these taken before me and why have I
lived so long alone and alive,” an emotional Mugabe told his supporters

The nonagenarian is the only leader Zimbabweans have ever known since the
country gained its independence from Britain in 1980. He is also the
oldest leader in the world.

He is facing increased pressure from both within Zanu PF and outside to
bring to an end his long but tumultuous rule, by paving the way for a
successor.

In Matobo, Mugabe also appeared to hint that he was beginning to feel the
strain of his job, as well as the trials and tribulations of poor health
and advanced age.

“It’s not always predictable that if you are alive this year that you will
be alive next year and the year after next. It doesn’t matter how healthy
you might feel, the decision that you continue to leap and to enjoy life
is that of the one personality we all call the Almighty God.

“And so, on this occasion, we should thank the Almighty God. I cannot
answer that … but I think sometimes I hear a silent voice saying, `All
of you, each man, each woman has a mission to fulfil in this world’.

“You have a mandate. That mandate might run a short time. Other mandates
run longer times. But your own mandate, your own mission … I have been
allowed to run for as long as you are still alive.

“You must discover what it is, and I cannot discover it more than saying I
am one amongst many and not just one amongst many, but one who has been
made by the many their leader,” the tired-looking Mugabe said.

Mugabe celebrated his birthday at a time that Zanu PF is being devoured by
its ugly tribal, factional and succession wars, which have worsened over
the past few weeks.

His warring party is split between two bitterly opposed groups – Team
Lacoste, which is rallying behind Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s
mooted presidential aspirations, and the Generation 40 camp which is
rabidly opposed to the Midlands godfather succeeding him.