Once a communist terrorist, always a communist terrorist (note Putin as well). Interesting payback for the British who liberated Mugabe's Shona tribe from the murderous thralldom they were held in by the Matabele.
Bruce Mugabe turns back on west and looks east Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria Tuesday April 19, 2005 Guardian President Robert Mugabe marked Zimbabwe's 25th anniversary of independence yesterday by attacking the west and defending his land-grab policy. In a 35-minute speech in the national sports stadium in Harare broadcast on national television, he repeatedly harked back to the days of colonialism and white minority rule. "To this day we bear the lasting scars of that dark encounter with colonialism, often described in the west as civilising," he said. Newly acquired Chinese jet fighters screamed over the Chinese-built stadium to emphasise his policy of friendship with Asian powers "We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our back to the west, where the sun sets," he told the crowd, reported to be between 8,000 and 40,000. The approach had brought new economic partnerships with the "Asian tigers". Scorning accusations that the March 31 parliamentary elections had been rigged, he said: "We made our democracy and we owe it to ourselves, not to anyone, least of all Europeans. Until we beat them at the battlefield, Britain and her kith and kin here would not concede voting rights to Africans." The 81-year-old president, who has ruled since overthrowing the white regime which severed Southern Rhodesia from Britain in 1965, spoke of the "strangled shrieks of brave guerrilla fighters facing execution" in the bush war. He described his land seizures as one of the greatest achievements since independence. "We have resolved the long-outstanding land question and the land has now come to its rightful owners, and with it, our sovereignty as well," he said. He did not refer to the food shortages. He has been criticised for handing the seized white farmland to cabinet ministers, judges and army officers rather than poor black Zimbabweans, and last month he said that 44% of the seized land was not now being cultivated. Agriculture has collapsed to the extent that Zimbabwe has had to rely on international food relief for three years. The economy has almost halved since 2000, when Mr Mugabe's militants began invading white-owned farms. Seventy per cent of the people are unemployed and live in poverty. Mr Mugabe awarded state honours to past presidents of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, saying: "We proclaim our pan-African spirit, stressing we shall never be a colony again." Many rejected his claims. "What have we got from the Chinese? Bad quality goods, buses that break down, and a badly built stadium," a factory worker said, withholding his name because it is a crime to criticise the president. "We are hungry. Food is short. We need to rebuild our ties with the west, whether Mugabe admits it or not. We are not celebrating this independence anniversary. We are just surviving, just barely surviving." Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC opposition, said the celebrations underlined the country's poverty. "The 25 years merely registered a period of sustained economic decline," he said. "We have nothing to show for it except overwhelming poverty, a systematic loss of our basic freedoms and a national crisis." Change of tune: What he said then and now 1980 'The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, that oppression and racism are inequalities [we should shun]' Yesterday 'We will never forget the strangled shrieks of brave guerrilla fighters facing execution. To this day we bear the lasting scars of that dark encounter with colonialism' 1980 'I wish to assure you that there can never be any return to the state of armed conflict which existed before our commitment to peace and the democratic process of election under the Lancaster House agreement' Yesterday 'We made our own democracy and we owe it to no one, least of all the Europeans. Let it be forever remembered: it was the bullet that brought the ballot' 1980 'It could never be a justification that because the whites oppressed us ... the blacks must oppress them ... An evil remains an evil, whether practised by white against black or black against white' Yesterday 'The British find us a very proud, determined, solid and stubborn and unyielding people, especially [about] our birthright, the land ... Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again' Guardian Unlimited C Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ------------------------ Yahoo! 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