adminThe Herald, July 3 1980
ZIMBABWE yesterday plunged into the simmering clash over the recognition of the Polisario Front with a stinging denunciation of Moroccan “aggression and aggrandisement” in Western Sahara.
In his maiden speech before the OAU, the head of Government of independent Zimbabwe, the Prime Minister Mr Mugabe, drew uproarious applause with his call on King Hassan to cease aggression, curb his country’s urge for aggrandisement and take into account the aspirations of the Western Saharans.
Defending President Machel’s earlier blunt attack on Morocco, Mr Mugabe said the country’s representative had purported to defend his country and asked: “Can colonialism, Mr Chairman, afford to talk of insults?”
Calling on Morocco to withdraw its troops from Western Sahara, Mr Mugabe chided the country’s Prime Minister, Mr Maati Bouabi for describing as insults the cry of a people fighting for decolonisation.
“Let it not be forgotten that the war being waged against the peace-loving people of Western Sahara is claiming lives and the delegate here talks of mere insults. What do those who cannot move their graves — the Western Saharans who died as a result of this aggression — say in their graves when they hear say: ‘Let not this country be insulted’?”
Mr Mugabe made an impassioned plea to the summit to make the forum meaningful by working to “be seen to stand against acts of aggression by states against others”.
In a personal attack on King Hassan the Prime said the Moroccan President “surely is the last man to be tutored in the laws of commandment of Allah”.
Laughter broke out when the Prime Minister said, “While Islamic practice might permit man to have up to four wives, it certainly prohibits that any of those shall be the coveted wife of another. You cannot, Mr Chairman, rightly turn another man’s wife into your wife. Similarly, you cannot turn another man’s camel into your camel by seizure, nor indeed can you rightly be possessed of another man’s piece of land by sheer aggrandisement.”
Online Reporter