Surrounded by admiring acolytes and against the spectacular backdrop of Victoria Falls, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe will blow out 77 candles on his birthday cake today. But the party mood will not be shared across the country following a string of unprecedented attacks on judges, journalists and opposition politicians.
Having narrowly avoided defeat at last June's elections, President Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has in recent weeks engaged in a concerted campaign to weed all dissenting voices from Zimbabwe's increasingly fragile democracy.
The printing presses of the main opposition newspaper, the Daily News, have been firebombed with military explosives, two foreign journalists - one a BBC correspondent - were expelled, and the country's leading judge was ousted after the Justice Minister accused him of acting like a colonialist relic.
Eight senior figures in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), including the party leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, have been arrested and charged with inciting violence.
The attack on the Supreme Court - which has delivered five anti-government rulings since December - is considered to be the most worrying development since invasions of white-owned farms by war veterans started one year ago.
The government has made no secret of its wish to remove the remaining four Supreme Court judges. However, the Justice Minister, Mr Patrick Chinamasa, said yesterday they would not be forcefully removed.
The last white judge, Mr Justice Nicholas McNally, is of Irish parentage. A source close to him dismissed government accusations of being an agent of colonial interests. The 70-yearold lived in Ireland for the duration of the second World War, the source said, which was more time than he has spent in Britain. The judicial purge was directed by the Information Minister, Mr Jonathan Moyo, a man widely regarded as one of the most powerful - and feared - figures in the Mugabe administration. "He seems to be the sole adviser to the President and is literally running the country," said one senior ZANU-PF figure.