adminTendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
President Mugabe has bemoaned the weaknesses by some of the current crop of African leaders and urged them to be incisive and emulate the potent legacy left by the continent’s founding fathers.The Zanu-PF President and First Secretary, who was yesterday inaugurated as Zimbabwe’s Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces for the next five years, was speaking during a luncheon he hosted for the former and current African Heads of States who came to attend his swearing in ceremony in Harare.
President Mugabe said some of the new African leaders lacked the astuteness and acumen that typified the continent’s yesteryear leaders.
“They were anti-colonialists,” he said. “You do not get anything that helps you from the former colonials.”
“That was their stance and (Kwame) Nkurumah used to say a good imperialist is only a dead one. When now we look at what is happening in Africa, our people easily lend themselves to control by Western powers, we lament what has gone by. We begin to wish that the past should come back.
“We are no longer strong. We sit with Westerners in their fora to decide on action against other African countries. We should never ever do that. But that happened.
“When we have an attack on Libya, we had three countries in the Security Council which agreed with Western countries that there should be action taken against Libya under Chapter 7 of the Charter of United Nations Charter which allowed now Nato to come in and we know what has happened. The situation there is in turmoil.”
President Mugabe said Western imperialists were now sucking oil from the North African country in the same way they did in Iraq when they deposed President Saddam Hussein on false allegations that he had weapons of mass destruction.
“They attacked Iraq on a lie told and very widely spread that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which he did not have,” he said.
“Bush knew that he was telling a lying and Blair knew he was supporting Bush in telling that lie and the two liars went into Iraq on the basis of that lie and only later on after they have killed Saddam Hussein they say ‘ah we were wrong, he had no weapons of mass destruction’.”
In Libya, President Mugabe said, was invaded on lying that they wanted to protect civilians.
As such, President Mugabe said Africa should do a self introspection and accentuate the ethos of its founding fathers.
“We wish that these old ones, their thinking, their legacy, the principles they had, we wish that those principles would be the guidelines of actions in defending our countries and this is why at times I say I feel lonely because at times when you go to the African Union it is all submission, submission and even if you talk against wrongs done to Africa by the Europeans, people get surprised,” he said.
“We have sanctions imposed on us and you get countries being afraid even being associated with us, being associated with Mugabe. You must not be seen with him. Wither, wither Africa? Let us learn from our founding fathers. We are happy some of them are here.”
President Mugabe hailed the role played by Sadc and its outgoing secretary general Dr Tomaz Salamao in brokering a political settlement between Zimbabwe’s rival parties, culminating in the formation of the inclusive Government.
He described Dr Salamao as the best secretary general Sadc had to date.
President Mugabe said the MDC component of the inclusive Government was retrogressive.
He said despite agreeing during the early days of the inclusive Government that the new Constitution would be crafted on the basis of the Kariba Draft, the MDC formations went on to shift positions and start to talk of a “people drive constitution”.
The colourful luncheon was spiced up with melodies from popular jazz crooner Dudu Manhenga.
Online Reporter