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Mugabe is our best foot forward, says Chinamasa

Mugabe is our best foot forward, says Chinamasa
By Nomusa Michelo
Friday August 17, 2007 [04:00]

MUGABE is our best foot forward, Zimbabwean justice minister Patrick Chinamasa has said. During a breakfast meeting organised by the Press Freedom Committee (PFC) of The Post at Mulungushi Village Complex, Chinamasa said no other leader could have withstood the demonisation and manipulation by the West.

“At the moment, the biggest challenge facing the country is all this demonisation that you are always seeing, it’s neo-colonialism propagated. So blatant in its form and manifestations that we believe Mugabe is our best foot forward,” Chinamasa said.

“He is the only one who can fight imperialism because we have been in this struggle, in the trenches for this long. Anybody else may not understand the manipulations and machinations of imperialism.”
Chinamasa said Zimbabwe has been able to survive the sanctions imposed on it since 2000 because of Mugabe’s leadership.

“We have been able to survive from 2000 because he has been giving us that kind of strong leadership. When you think about the demonisation that they have been throwing at him, which African leader would have survived? They would have thrown in the towel,” he said. “He has been able to withstand that pressure and we love him for that.”

On the land reform programme, Chinamasa said the Zimbabwean government has only wanted two million hectares of land from the white Zimbabwean farmers and the programme was to be implemented over 30 years.

“We only wanted two million hectares when we started the programme because we knew that is what we could plan it,” he said.

“But in the beginning we had resistance and so it happened that what we intended to achieve in 30 or 40 years we achieved in five years.”

He said the land was going to be a destabilising issue in the government’s polices if it had not been resolved.

“We have now resolved it. We have laid a proper foundation for our economic take over,” Chinamasa said.

“What now remains is taking our farmers and providing them with inputs and equipment for them to become productive on the land.”

Chinamasa said the Zimbabwean government had so far acquired eleven million hectares out of the 15 million hectares of farmland.

He accused the British government of exhibiting double standards on the land reform programme in Zimbabwe.

“There has been some double standards on the part of the British. We compare our situation to Kenya. In Kenya after Mau Mau, the British paid to the Kenyan government to pay to the British farmers in excess of 550 million British Pounds.

Because of that compensation, it meant the repossession in Kenya was a smoother one except for the Mau Mau,” he said. “In our case, for the period 1980 to 2000, the British paid forty million pounds only. And when the British realised that the land was a very emotive issue, they then decided that we could not appeal to their own people for our side of the story.”

Chinamasa said despite Britain calling itself a democratic society, which advocates freedom of speech, it did not allow the Zimbabwean government to speak.

“I am aware that their own people have been lied to in the same way that (former British Prime Minister Tony) Blair lied to them about the Iraq situation,” he said. “He has been lying about the Zimbabwe situation, and because he has been lying, he will not allow Zimbabwean people to be in London and prove to the British people our side of the story. That is the common threat on the issue of land.”

And Chinamasa said the issue raised in the international media about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe was a mere smokescreen to hide British and US opposition to the land reform programme.

“The US Congress enacted the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001 which prohibited the granting of credit by international institution in which the UN is represented,” he said. “And of course there is no international institution in which the UN is not represented, even our own African Development Bank. And because of the UN representation they will not grant credit to an African country even though they call themselves an African bank.”

Chinamasa said Zimbabwe has for the past ten years been running as a cash economy.
“So you have a situation where for the past ten years Zimbabwe has been managing without any external balance of payment support. We have basically been running our government on a cash basis,” he said. “They were not even satisfied with that, they have even imposed travel bans on all business people and government leaders.”
And Chinamasa said to be politically correct in Zimbabwean politics, one has to be very close to the issue of the land.

“The person who will win the day at the end of the day is the fight of the land,” he said. “If you are to be correct in Zimbabwean politics, all you have to be very close to the issue of land and its redistribution to the people and when you do that is what history is going to be.”

And Chinamasa has said the Zimbabwean government will look into the issue of Zambian nationals being mistreated in Zimbabwe.
He has already informed the relevant ministers about the issues raised about the mistreatment of Zambians in Zimbabwe.

“The complaint about Zambians being ill-treated I’ve taken it on board because it came to me when I was giving interviews,” he said. “It is something that I have already raised with the relevant ministers. But I would also want that on your side you raise them with your government.”
And Chinamasa said some western detractors don’t want a strong, stable and independent region.


“They will not want us to have a mind of our own as a region,” he said. “Our interest can never be the same as those of Europe. We have different levels of development. When we meet at WTO (World Trade Organisation) and at different forums, our interests are different.”

And Chinamasa urged civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to look after the interests of their home countries.

“Some of the NGOs are formed to undermine our position. What we would like to see is NGOs and civil society that is home grown, that looks after our interest, that take position to defend out position regionally without any shame. That is what we need,” said Chinamasa.

Labels: MUGABE, NEOCOLONIALISM, PATRICK CHINAMASA

posted by MrK @ 4:09 AM