Speaking as chairman of the African Union at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) headquarters staff in Botswana, the dictator said: ‘I give poison not for you to swallow but to give to someone else’, while being heavily applauded.
His comments come in the same week South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma is quoted as saying Africans had lived together peacefully until “the others”(whites) arrived.
The website Bulawayo24.com quotes Mugabe as saying South Africa needed a second liberation, which would transfer wealth to blacks marginalised because whites owned most of the land and got most of the employment opportunities. ‘People are unemployed . . . the wrath of South Africans needs to be more directed towards the whites than the blacks’, he said. ‘You can’t live in palaces while others are living in shanties’.
Mugabe called on Africa to stop courting the West for financial support: ‘they say here is money but you do that’, arguing that even with the end of colonialism the oppressors were back in Africa in the form of NGOs: ‘They tell us we should have good corporate governance, human rights . . . human rights? Rule of law? When they sent us to prison . . . ‘
Meanwhile South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, alleged that Africans had lived together peacefully until “the others” arrived. Labour movement Solidarity says this statement is in itself xenophobic. In fact, he is inciting further racial polarisation.
