Maravi

Tsvangirai should be condemned - Mutasa

Tsvangirai should be condemned - Mutasa
By George Chellah
Friday March 23, 2007 [02:00]

WE should condemn people like Tsvangirai, Zimbabwean minister of state for national security Didymus Mutasa has said. And Mutasa said the desire by the sub-region to foster unity and solidarity among member countries was being stifled by external forces. Addressing journalists yesterday, Mutasa accused Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai of bringing untold suffering on people.

"If you, particularly young people, don't live up to be courageous people, who will be our leaders?... but to live as people who will do anything that the white man requires you to do, then there will be no Africa as we want it to be and pan Africanism will be gone totally," Mutasa said. "And so, I think we should condemn people like Tsvangirai, Mutambara, Dhlakama and other people who have brought about untold suffering to their people for the sake of wanting to be leaders because they are being told to be leaders by the likes of Blair and Bush."

He said Tsvangirai and others should be quietly ignored. "People like Tsvangirai and others, when I say like others. I mean others who operated in Mozambique who were not people of their own standing, who were sent to do certain acts, which were criminal by the outside countries. People that we should quietly ignore because the moment you put into writing the dirty work that is being done by Tsvangirai, the dirty work that was done by Dhlakama of killing his won people that kind of thing, you know it will be sad for Africa," Mutasa said. "They are working under the so-called save Zimbabwe campaign...save Zimbabwe from whom? Save Zimbabwe from the people who have brought it about and what are they saving it for? Saving it for the white man who is slowly losing land and slowly getting out of our country."

Asked about reports of brutality in Zimbabwe, Mutasa responded: "Being brutal, I can't understand when you say the government is being brutal because it is taking care of people who are breaking the law. Tsvangirai has caused untold suffering to our police forces everybody reports about him having been beaten but nobody reports about his people who have been throwing petrol bombs to sleeping officers of our police at midnight and Zimbabwe will not tolerate that kind of lawlessness," Mutasa said. "And when Tsvangirai goes into a police station and starts ordering the officers there to release his people that would have been arrested... well the police force don't have any orders from opposition leaders. They will only be ordered by their minister of home affairs and Tsvangirai is not a minister of home affairs. So they got angry with him yes and boxed him, he deserved it."

Mutasa said calls for SADC assistance were actually made from Tanzania. "The outgoing President of Tanzania Comrade Benjamin Mkapa, he made that request to all SADC leaders and I think it was a very well intended and good request. He said that 'you are surprised that when Zimbabwe is under attack by Bush and Blair the SADC leaders appear to him to simply stand and do nothing' and said that must be a thing of the past," Mutasa said.

"Zimbabwe came into being because frontline states and Tanzania helped us who were in the bush, who were fighting against imperialism and Mkapa is reminding the present SADC leaders to do the same as Comrade Kaunda, Seretse Khama and others did for us." He said there was need for the region to stand together. "You see there is a saying that 'we should hang together to avoid hanging separately'.

Last time, it was Mozambique, which was under attack by Dlakama at the request of Western nations and now its us who are under attack by Tsvangirai at the request of Blair and Bush, who knows what happens tomorrow? Mutasa asked. "Is it not likely to be Zambia or some other SADC country, which will suffer the same consequence? All we are saying is that we should stick together because we are people who come from the same regional grouping. "Working in the way that they would help Zimbabwe, in the same way that Zimbabwe helped Mozambique militarily, we also went, helped the DRC militarily together with Namibia and Angola."

Mutasa said he did not think that the problems in Zimbabwe were with Tsvangirai.
"Tsvangirai is doing this in order to facilitate Blair and Bush to bring us up to the United Nations. And that is where SADC and other friends of Zimbabwe should stand with Zimbabwe and refuse that," Mutasa said. "This is an issue, which is internal between us and our people it has absolutely no need to be taken to the UN. "When SADC stands together and refuse so Africa will stand together and refuse and so the imperialists will fail that's what I am trying to say."

Asked what would happen if Western countries think of military aggression, Mutasa answered: "We are ready! don't you realise that Smith was supported by the so-called West people with South Africa nearest to us?" Mutasa asked. "And we have always said that the defeat of Smith was the defeat of the Boers in South Africa, it was the defeat of the Portuguese and the British. And you young people must learn that you must read our history and not behave like Western dogs who are pulled along and left wherever the West want them to be. We are not like that in Zimbabwe."

He also said he did not come to Zambia to complain as it was being felt. "I was invited by our colleagues here, the invitation was in 2005. It has come now because we are following this meeting of the Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security. Our President yes, knows I am here but he has not sent me here," Mutasa said. On President Levy Mwanawasa's statement in Namibia, Mutasa said: "I also think that you are making a report based on another report, perhaps which you did not read. I happen to have read President Mwanawasa's comments and I don't think that what he said is what you are interpreting for him to have said," Mutasa said.

"The fact that he has likened Zimbabwe to the Titanic is only a simile and not that he is referring to Zimbabwe as a sinking ship. He will not do that because I know he knows Zimbabwe, he has been there most recently and he certainly knows that we are not sinking, if at all we shall ever sink." And Mutasa said the desire by the sub region to foster unity and solidarity among member countries is being stifled by external forces. During the 23 Zambia-Zimbabwe Joint Permanent Commission (JPC) on defence and security, Mutasa called for unity among member states in the sub-region.

Labels: ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 4:24 AM