Mugabe To Meet West's
Hostility With Hostility To
Whites
12-14-2
- (AFP) -- Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe warned
that he would react to what he called Western hostility against his
government by taking a more negative stance against whites in the
southern African country.
-
- "The more they (western countries) work against us,
the more they express their hostility against us, the more negative we
shall become to their kith and kin here," Mugabe said in a speech to
open the annual conference of his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union
Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party.
-
- Mugabe lamented that some European countries,
Australia and New Zealand have been sucked into Zimbabwe's dispute with
its former colonial power, Britain, and warned that they will be treated
as enemies of Zimbabwe.
-
- "The difference is between us and Britain but if they
want to see us as enemies, fine -- we will treat them as such."
-
- Relations between Zimbabwe and its former colonial
power have soured in recent years as Mugabe's government embarked on a
massive campaign to seize white-owned land and give it to landless
blacks.
-
- Mugabe said white farmers who tried to resist the the
land reform scheme "committed an unforgivable sin... which shall always
live against them".
-
- "We saw who they were, what they were and we realised
we had nurtured enemies among us, so we started treating them as
enemies, enemies of our government, enemies of our party, enemies of our
people."
-
- Mugabe scoffed at allegations of bad governance and
human rights abuses saying it was "rubbish" coming from people who
yesterday turned Zimbabweans into slaves.
-
- "Where was democracy when our land was being seized?
Where was justice? Where were human rights when we were being arrested?"
he asked.
-
- The Zimbabwean leader admitted that the land reform
exercise has not been perfect and still has "some way to go."
-
- He said that while some people had still not taken up
land allocated to them, there were claims and counterclaims on already
settled land.
-
- "People are fighting for land, some are being moved
after being settled to make way for others," he said.
-
- Mugabe promised that he will personally lead a team
that will visit all the provinces of the southern African country to
carry out an audit of who owns what.
-
- "Do not fight each other," he appealed.
-
- Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial and sometimes
violent land reform programme in early 2000. The exercise saw white
landowners being dispossessed of their land to make way for landless
blacks.
-
- To date, the government claims to have re-settled
374,000 small-scale black farmers on 14 million hectares (42 million
acres) of formerly white-owned land.
-
- The land exercise is said by aid agencies to be partly
responsible, along with a drought that has hit five other southern
African countries, for the hunger threatening close to eight million
Zimbabweans, or about three-quarters of the country's population.
-
- ZANU-PF's three-day conference is taking place against
a backdrop of the worst economic crisis to face the country since
independence in 1980. Basic goods are running seriously short and
inflation is in the triple digits and continuing to climb.
-
- Mugabe, in his speech to hundreds of his party
officials and supporters gathered in the small town of Chinhoyi, some
115 kilometres (70 miles) north of the capital, did not refer to the
current crisis but blamed the economic meltdown on "imperialism."
-
- Mugabe ruled out a government of national unity with
the opposition in the country.
-
- "To include (Morgan) Tsvangirai in my government...
let them go hang wherever they are," Mugabe said in his address.
-
- "We continue to rule this country to the best way
possible. We will accept those who want to work with us harmoniously ...
but those who set themselves up as our opponents and enemy we will ...
react in the same way towards them," he said.
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The Mulindwas
communication group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
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