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“Now we are saying, constitute yourselves into companies, we would have the task of helping you. I have been speaking to the Ministers, Kasukuwere and Mpofu that the concentration is on the 51 percent. Just imagine, 49 percent of our diamonds. Forty nine percent is still leaving the country. If we have a truly indigenous company, nothing will leave the country. Sure, we want partners, we want technology, but let the majority of our companies be ours in toto.”
The conference, being attended by about 3 000 delegates from across the country, started on Wednesday and is running under the theme “Defend national sovereignty, consolidate indigenisation and economic empowerment.”
“The (indigenisation) policy is a policy of empowerment which adds on to the land issue. We will not reverse this policy. Let no one believe that it is a tactic for elections. It is a fundamental policy,” said President Mugabe.
Turning to the inclusive Government, the President said the political arrangement was a travesty of democracy and must be done away with soon through fresh elections. He said while the Government had helped reduce tension among the people, it had run its course, but MDC formations are afraid of elections.
Said the President:
“There are those among us who lost elections completely, but because we wanted the three parties to be together, we said we will work together and asked Parliament to regard them as if they won an election. So we made them ‘honourable this’ and ‘honourable that’ when votes had made them dishonourable. We actually cheated on democracy, but let’s not over-do it. In fact there was no power in the constitution to do so, so there is this patch, we will take it out. Now chigamba chacho hachichaita, chava kuremera bhurugwa (the patchwork government is now untenable).”
Zanu-PF, he said, is a party of peace, whose policies are good enough to win it any election without violence.
“We in Zanu-PF must renounce violence. We must reject it, we don’t need it in the party; our progressive ideas are the tools that will always win us elections. We have better thinking than everyone else. Why should you be afraid of MDC? You show them clean girls and you defeat them in a day! We are a party of the people, they are a party for women,” he said, to a round of applause.
He castigated Europe and America for their continued intrusion in African affairs, particularly the war they waged to unseat and finally murder Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi recently. Libya is now rubble, a ruined and broken country taken more than 40 years back in terms of development, said President Mugabe.
“We cannot be indifferent to this turn of history. It challenges our sacrifices, the sacrifices we made in the liberation struggle. We have to take note and take a stance of a continent of Africa. We failed to have a plan to help Libya. We just said ‘things will sort themselves out’, yet people were being killed. Today it is strife all the time,” he said, reiterating that rich developing countries like
Zimbabwe are in permanent danger of western aggression.
The Arab Spring, said President Mugabe, has provided a lesson that imperialism cannot be appeased, pointing out that Col Gaddafi took responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, welcomed the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Tripoli, opened up the Libyan armed forces to the west and “in a naïve way” the late Col Gaddafi invested billions of his country’s oil wealth in Europe and the USA.
He said: “He thought he was making friends, allowing the MI6 and the SAS (UK Special Air Service) to come to Libya. So they started their surveillance, so when it came to attacking Libya, they knew the strong points and Libya fell easily. Zvimwe zvaiita sekuti haana ruzivo, aifurirwa nevana vake (Gaddafi acted naively). Zvino mukanzwa zvonzi (If you hear that) President Mugabe has invited Blair to come to this country, iye Blair, you know kuti maparara (that you are in trouble).”
The President said Col Gaddafi did not invest much of his country’s petrodollars in Africa, but merely donated camels to some countries.
“We have got four camels at the farm. No real investment. We will remember him with the camels. But he was an African leader. We are unhappy with the manner he died.”
He called for unity in Zanu-PF, saying pictures of him being displayed at a photographic exhibition being held in his honour and running concurrently with the conference show that he worked well with fellow cadres from different parts of the country and tribes during the liberation struggle. Such unity, he said, must continue in the party.
Zanu-PF, said the President, would continue building strong alliances with sister parties in Africa. He thanked the African National Congress of South Africa, Frelimo of Mozambique, Swapo of Namibia, Chama Chamapinduzi of Tanzania, Botswana Democratic Party, MPLA of Angola and the Patriotic Front of Zambia for attending the conference.
Online Reporter