Today is a happy day for Robert Mugabe; he turns 83 and is as virile as ever. Police have imposed a three month ban on opposition rallies after last week's violent crackdown, and the "Most Consistent and Authentic Revolutionary Leader," as he is officially called, will deliver a speech to cheering thousands at his $60,000 birthday party this Saturday. Bully for him. Mugabe lashed out at the Brits last week, saying that the British government was "queer" and that Prime Minister Tony Blair is acting like an "old-fashioned headmaster." This latest harangue is of a piece with Mugabe's paranoid homophobic rants. In 1999, just before he started seizing white-owned farms, he declared, "If Tony Blair wants to turn the UK into the United Gay Kingdom that's a matter for him but he should not go around lecturing other countries." He also said Blair's Cabinet was full of "gay gangsters." Blair's spokesperson at the time responded matter-of-factly: "The Prime Minister is not a gay gangster." This would all be laughable were Mugabe just a maniac heckling the Prime Minister at Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner, and not a maniac starving millions of people. Meanwhile, South Africa does nothing. --James Kirchick