GRIFFIN SHEA and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday
ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe has blamed his nation’s unprecedented economic crisis on an international white conspiracy, as he defended his controversial land reform programme at the opening of his Zanu-PF party’s congress.
He attacked the IMF, the West, and globalisation, saying reforms to liberalise Zimbabwe’s economy had not benefitted the country’s people but had destroyed earlier social gains.
Mugabe also denounced ”the white man’s allies in southern Africa,” which he said were opposed to African nationalist parties.
”Because we have seen the same forces we fought against in our war of liberation regrouping across borders to protect their interests … we, too, have started regrouping to create solidarity” among African nationalist parties, he said.
The special congress comes as he faces the most serious threats ever posed to his 20-year rule. The economy has crumbled into its worst-ever crisis, the army is entangled in a hugely unpopular war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the year-old opposition Movement for Democratic Change has quickly become a potent political rival.
Mugabe has backed party faithful who have in the name of liberation war veterans occupied more than 1600 white-owned farms, saying they are completing the work that began with the 1970’s guerrilla war that ended minority rule.
During his 90-minute speech, which he delivered in English and Shona, Mugabe managed to attack almost everyone who has opposed his program.
He decried court rulings that have found his scheme unconstitutional, saying in Shona: ”We should not be defending ourselves in the courts. They have no role in this case.”
He also blasted the MDC as a pawn of former colonial power Britain and called its leader Morgan Tsvangirai a curse on the nation.
Meanwhile, London’s Daily Telegraph reports that Zimbabwe has sent 38 agents to spy on political opponents of Mugabe and white farmers who have taken refuge in Britain.
The paper quoted British-based officials of the MDC who claimed diplomatic passports were being used by agents monitoring activists and Zimbabweans who fled the political turmoil in their country.
The opposition members, who seek to oust Mugabe, believe that the agents, many of them women, have been sent by Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, the paper reported. – AFP