24-02-2007 The Vigil marked Mugabe’s birthday celebrations with a performance by Zimbabwean protest singer Viomak, who sang several songs from her new album “Happy 83rd Birthday President R G Mugabe (bones of a 30 year old)". Everyone joined in as she sang “Gono Bvisa Father Zero (Gono remove Father Zero [Mugabe])”. It came as no surprise that the Zimbabwean Embassy did not accept her invitation to attend the launch of the new album.

Viomak generously bought pizzas and soft drinks for our supporters – in contrast to the celebrations in Gweru where there was food for the bigwigs while the ordinary people went away hungry. Unlike the obscene birthday feast for Mugabe we had a genuine celebration for Vigil Co-ordinator Rose, who turned 62 (bones of a 62 year old) today and was given a great pom-pom by Vigil supporters.
With a big demonstration in Trafalgar Square against proposals to modernise Britain’s nuclear deterrent we had many people stop by to sign our petition. Every cause under the sun seemed to be represented in Trafalgar Square, except, strangely enough, anything to do with Africa. There were the usua;l protests about Iraq, Iran, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan . . . but no obvious reference to Darfur and Zimbabwe, or even Somalia. What is going on here? Is Africa just being airbrushed out of world problems?

The British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (20/2/07) reports that Zimbabwe may gain the vice-presidency of the World Food Programme (WFP) with the support of all seven African countries presently on the WFP's 36-strong executive board. This makes us realise we have a lot more to do in spreading knowledge about Zimbabwe. Indeed we spent time today discussing the situation with a gentleman from the Democratic Republic of Congo who continued to proclaim his support of Mugabe.

Better news was a visit by a big group of interested girl guides from Speldhurst in Kent who have been alerted to the Zimbabwe situation by our English supporters, Sue, Alfred and Francesca Toft. A group from the Vigil had the pleasure of visiting St Mary’s Church, Speldhurst to take part in a service for Zimbabwe a couple of weeks ago (see last Vigil Diary).

We are pleased to say that support is growing for ACTSA’s Zimbabwean rally in Trafalgar Square on 10th March – we urge everyone to come and make this a really big Zimbabwean event – for details, see: http://www.actsa.org/Pages/Page.php?pID=1109&title=Rally%20for%20Dignity. In the meantime next week (3rd March) the MDC UK is joining us for a demonstration in solidarity with MDC activists back home who are receiving brutal treatment at the hands of the Zanu-PF Regime and against the postponement of the Zimbabwean Presidential Elections to 2010.

For latest Vigil pictures, please see the link in the updates column on the right of this page.

FOR THE RECORD: 70 signed the register.