Who lives in a house like this?

Only a greedy dictator would live in a house like this when all about him are starving.

The clues are all there in the obscenely luxurious touches in a country that the United Nations says has Africa’s worst economy. No wonder Zimbabwe despot Robert Mugabe has banned journalists from reporting on the shame that is his palace at Borrowdale Brooke.

When Mugabe took power in 1980, his people had a life expectancy of around 65 years. Today the figures are 37 years for men and 34 for women — the lowest of any country in the world. But that hasn’t stopped Mugabe building a palace with 30 bedrooms set in 44 acres of landscaped gardens. Jewels drip from crystal chandeliers amid marble columns and velvet drapes. The front of the building looks like the White House while the inside recalls the worst excesses of the Palace of Versailles, built for France’s Sun King, Louis XIV.

Unemployment stands at 90 per cent and Zimbabwe has the world’s highest inflation rate at 100,000 per cent. A loaf of bread costs Zimbabweans $7,000,000 Zim dollars and they must wait up to four hours in lines to get it. No wonder it’s said that hundreds of Zimbabweans are literally starving to death every week. Mugabe may take pleasure from his palace’s two man-made lakes. But neither is big enough to wash the blood from the hands of a man who had 20,000 opposition civilians killed in a military campaign called the Gukurahundi, or “the early rain that washes away the chaff” in the Eighties.

A few years ago another operation — “Drive Out The Rubbish” — used bulldozers to clear the poor from shanty towns. It destroyed the homes or livelihoods of 700,000 people, according to a UN report. They had been advised to move there by the government and promised new homes would be built for them. But when, tired of broken promises, they voted for the opposition in the March 2005 elections — which it’s claimed Mugabe rigged anyway — he had them evicted.

None will be welcome at the dictator’s palace with its en-suite bedrooms and idyllic setting 18 miles from the capital Harare’s poverty. No expense was spared as marble was flown in from Italy, blue-glazed tiles from China and the best Arab craftsmen hired from the Middle East. One Zimbabwean investigative journalist said: “It represents the worst of Mugabe’s love of luxury and the good life. The palace rivals the most extravagant of the African leaders’ residences. He does not care that millions of Zimbabweans are wallowing in poverty and hunger.”

Zimbabwe was known as the Jewel of Africa when Mugabe came to power. A series of rigged elections and his despotic rule have turned it into the Sick Man of the World. One in five Zimbabweans aged 15 to 49 has the HIV virus that can lead to Aids. There is a desperate shortage of medicines and hospital beds, yet Mugabe could have built and fully equipped four state-of-the-art hospitals rather than one opulent palace. It’s not as if he is short of a roof over his head. He and his family have the use of at least four of the thousands of farms seized from their white owners in 2000 and it’s believed he owns a series of other hiding places. Mugabe moves from location to undisclosed location, partly to keep ahead of would-be assassins. Underground steel and reinforced concrete bunkers have been built in case his people rebel. Mugabe’s reign of terror has seen him labelled the Black Hitler by critics — and it’s a tag he REVELS in, boasting he would be “a Hitler tenfold” to achieve his aims.

He has seven university degrees from various academic institutions in south and east Africa, but once bragged of also having “a degree in violence”. Mugabe and his chief henchmen are banned from travelling to the EU and America, although they often find loopholes to get around the restrictions. But as Mugabe relaxes in his palace, there is one thing he need not worry about— he is still a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. The award was bestowed on him by the Queen 13 years ago.

Sir Robert Mugabe, KCB, owner of the Borrowdale Brooke palace, lives a life of disgrace — but seemingly not disgraceful enough to be stripped of this honour by Britain.