Robert Mugabe vowed yesterday to haul Zimbabwe out of economic decline, but offered few concrete measures for reversing the slump.
Instead, in his state of the nation address to Parliament, President Mugabe blamed foreign ”interference” for Zimbabwe’s plight, denouncing the Commonwealth as an ”Anglo-Saxon unholy alliance”.
”We abhor high global high-handedness of the strong and powerful; we abhor unilateral interference in the internal political affairs of other countries, especially smaller states,” he said. ”We accordingly jealously guard our sovereignty against such interference,” he added, reiterating his threat to leave the Commonwealth.
Mugabe described Zimbabwe’s economic problems as ”challenges that can be overcome”. He vowed to crack down on corruption and blackmarket deals that he said were aggravating currency shortages, and promised to curb inflation, currently 526%, through price controls.
He said he was working to build a rival world-power axis involving China to face up to the unipolar world dominated by the US.
”The speech was entirely delusional,” said Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, one of the few remaining privately owned newspapers. ”He’s living in a world of his own invention. He offered no solutions and appears to think a lifeline is about to be thrown by China and there’s no sign of it.”
Mugabe declared his seizures of white-owned farms as a ”success for all of Africa”, and claimed the government was improving the country’s ailing transportation, energy and telecommunications sectors. But he made no mention of crippling strikes by doctors, nurses and postal workers.
The speech came as the state’s treason case against the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai faltered amid an unusual request from prosecutors to change their charge, because of flimsy evidence. He is accused of ordering Mugabe’s assassination. – Guardian Unlimited Â