Zimbabwe’s autocratic ruler on Monday told the US government to ”go hang” and said the US-led coalition’s operations in Iraq were ”a grave criminal act”.
President Robert Mugabe, in an Easter interview broadcast on state television to mark the nation’s 23rd anniversary of independence from British colonial rule, said Western countries described him as a dictator in the mold of Saddam Hussein.
”When you stick to your principles they say you are a dictator. I am not a dictator,” he said.
In Iraq, ”you have a death toll of children, you have people without limbs, you have in international crime that is being committed … a grave criminal act,” Mugabe said.
Mugabe castigated the State Department’s top official on Africa, Walter Kansteiner, and President George W. Bush over US criticisms of last year’s presidential elections in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe narrowly won a vote condemned by independent observers as swayed by political violence and vote rigging.
”Who is Kansteiner to denounce the validity of our election? If he doesn’t listen, let him go hang. Bush, of all people, is saying so. We stick by our election verdict. What happened in Florida? Who of the two of us cheated on elections? It was obviously Bush,” Mugabe said.
The United States and the European Union, along with Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have refused to accept the results of last year’s poll.
The US government has imposed travel restrictions on Mugabe and officials in his government and ruling party.
Mugabe acknowledged the southern African nation was facing its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980 and had experienced ”three years of suffering” since he launched an often violent programme to confiscate thousands of white-owned farms. But he defended the land-reform policy.
”We are delighted at last our land is now the people’s land. The white man has been displaced by the black man. We are strong politically,” he said.
Mugabe described the opposition as ”neocolonialist extensions of Britain” and ”agents of imperialism” nurtured by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and white farmers, the descendants of British colonial-era settlers.
”Let it be known we are not totally independent until we take over our land. Now the land is in our hands, we have the capacity to improve the lot of our people. These hardships are going to go,” he said.
Zimbabwe suffers acute shortages of food, gasoline and essential imports.
The opposition has promised to step up a campaign of strikes, demonstrations and mass action to demand democratic reforms.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, in his Easter message, urged supporters to ”stand ready for the final call to reclaim our dignity and freedom”.
”There is gain at the end of pain. We have been through times so hard and perilous … We have been confronted by death every day but we shall never lose hope or surrender,” he said.
He said Mugabe’s dictatorial rule, backed by sweeping security and media laws, had to be defied.
”We have now realised that change demands action,” Tsvangirai said.
The government on Wednesday trebled the price of regular gasoline and most bus and commuter fares have more than doubled, taking up as much as three-quarters of the monthly earnings of workers who live in impoverished townships surrounding Harare.
At least 200 people have been killed in political violence since 2000 and thousands of others, mostly opposition supporters, have been arrested, tortured and hounded from their homes, rights groups say.
Police arrested more than 500 opposition officials and activists after a national strike called by the opposition last month shut down the economy. At least 250 people were treated for injuries from assaults and beatings in the initial days of the crackdown, which was condemned by the United States. – Sapa-AP