ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has described the state-sponsored land invasions that have left millions of his countrymen reliant on food aid to survive as the “best thing that could have ever happened to an African country”.
In a rare interview with US broadcaster CNN ahead of his address to the United Nations yesterday, the 85-year-old also called for an end to sanctions against him and more than 220 of his allies saying they could not be justified.
Since 2002 Mr Mugabe and his close supporters have been banned from travelling to the EU and US, and had their offshore bank accounts frozen, in response to his poor human-rights record and authoritarian style of rule.
However, Mr Mugabe is allowed to travel to the UN General Assembly in New York in his presidential capacity, as his country is a member of the global body.
Defending the nine-year campaign to rid his country of white farmers and confiscate their land, he said that although the dispossessed were Zimbabwean citizens, they were descended from British settlers who took the land from blacks during the colonial era.
“Zimbabwe belongs to Zimbabweans, pure and simple . . . They [the white farmers] occupied the land illegally. They seized the land from our people.”
In relation to the widespread violence that engulfed last year’s disputed general election, much of it against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Mr Mugabe refused to accept his party had lost, or to take any blame for the violence.
“You don’t leave power when imperialists dictate that you leave,” he said.
“There is regime change. Haven’t you heard of [the] regime change programme by Britain and the United States that is aimed at getting not just Robert Mugabe out of power but getting Robert Mugabe and his party out of power?”
When addressing the UN yesterday, Mr Mugabe strongly criticised western countries for their “filthy clandestine antics” in keeping sanctions in place even though he had formed a coalition government with former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai last February. “The western countries, in particular the US and the EU, still impose illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe, to our surprise . . . and refused to remove those sanctions,” he said in his speech to the UN.
Mr Mugabe told delegates he was unclear why countries would continue to withhold aid, despite the fact the US and EU have repeatedly explained the powersharing deal needed to implemented in full before direct aid would be given.
“We wonder what their motives are and we ask what they would see us do. Where stand their humanitarian principles, we ask, when their illegal sanctions are ruining the lives of our children?” he said.