A happy birthday for President Mugabe?
Africa's Robert Mugabe turns 85 today.
Leader of Zimbabwe since 1980, Mr Mugabe is said to be planning a for the official bash next weekend.
His birthdays are seldom quiet affairs it seems. Two years ago, 20,000 supporters crammed into a football stadium by way of celebration.
Nothing wrong in marking such a milestone of course, except perhaps if you're the leader of an impoverished nation where a huge majority of people are relying on food aid, a nation which is suffering a cholera epidemic and where inflation - well, hyper-inflation - is running at over 230m%.
So as his people suffer, Mr Mugabe continues to enjoy the high-life. The recent discovery that Mr Mugabe and his wife own a probably won't surprise too many either.
It wasn't always like this though. In the 1970s Mr Mugabe was feted as a true African hero for leading a guerrilla campaign to help rid the then-Rhodesia of white minority rule.
Panorama's David Dimbleby caught up with him in Geneva in 1976 at a UK-brokered conference to determine future power-sharing in Rhodesia and found a man determined to bring about black majority rule and ultimately democracy to his country by any means.
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This successful campaign in removing the last vestiges of white colonial rule from Zimbabwe provided Mr Mugabe with goodwill throughout much of Africa and great political capital.
Goodwill which has long-since disappeared on both the international and .
In those early years his leadership of Zimbabwe, alongside other guerrilla leaders like Joshua Nkomo, was a success and the new nation prospered.
Within a few years though, the dream was floundering amid allegations of corruption and anti-democratic practices. As Panorama covered the 1985 election campaign in Zimbabwe, Mr Mugabe was unapologetic in his desire to move away from democracy and create a one-party state - again by any means:
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The outcome of that election was never in doubt. Nor the several that followed.
Mr Mugabe's grip on power has remained strong until as he wrestled with the to his leadership - the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and rise of democratic forces.
Ultimately, though the is a tragedy both for a man who started out with high ideals but more importantly for some of his impoverished people for whom this great survivor may have survived far too long.
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