Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe lashed out at rich western countries on Monday and, together with other African leaders, heaped praise on China as officials from across the continent and Beijing met in Ethiopia for a Sino-African conference on cooperation.
Mugabe spent much of a keynote speech delivered to an audience, which included Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and leaders or ministers from almost all African states, lambasting ”the predatory warrior states and kingdoms of the west.”
Today’s ”dangerous, unipolar world is characterised by the brutal predominance of America, unconditionally supported by Britain, Australia and other nations of Europe, recklessly seeking global hegemony under the convenient but false cover of good governance, human rights and democracy,” he said.
The west believes ”it can make and unmake, dismantle and occupy sovereign states, loot their economy as it seeks to remake the world after its own image,” he said.
On the economic front, Africa’s ”business people have remained under the spell of a Western sorcerer whose bag of dirty tricks is that of devious deals and unfair trade practices,” said the Zimbabwean president.
Conversely, said Mugabe, China has been ”among the few genuine global makers of democracy, among the authors of comprehensive human rights, rule of law and legality.”
”It is taking far too long for most of our business people to realise that the biggest world market, the fastest growing economies, are in fact in the east, the largest being China,” he said.
”It is taking them far too long to realise that the thousands of seasons of our association with the west have not yielded fair trade terms, technology transfer or development,” added Mugabe.
”Broader partnerships with friendly Third World countries and emerging markets such as the People’s Republic of China and other countries of the Far East should be the focus and emphasis of our efforts,” he said.
”Zimbabwe will not collapse, our struggle will not fail and we will never be colonised again,” he declared.
Zimbabwe, which quit the Commonwealth this month after the grouping of mainly former British colonies extended its suspension, faces massive food shortages blamed on both drought and the government’s controversial land reform programme, under which white-owned farmland has been seized and re-distributed to blacks.
Wen Jiabao told the gathering that global stability depended on boosting development in the world’s poorest countries.
”It is clear that world peace and development cannot possibly be sustained if the North-South divide grows wider and developing nations grow poorer,” he said.
The prime minister said ”economic globalisation, while bringing development opportunities, is also posing unprecedented challenges to the developing world.”
”In the face of this fact and truth, China’s assistance offer to Africa is with sincerity and without any political conditions,” he said, pointing out ”difficulties Africans are facing with the international monetary agencies and in their bilateral relations
with the western countries.”
African states frequently complain about the ”conditionalities” attached to loans offered by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and blame the economic policies of these organisations for holding back the continent’s development.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the meeting that ”China had been a reliable friend of Africa during the liberation struggle” against European colonial powers.
”Taking into account our experience of the last three years … I hope the economic and social development cooperation between Africa and China will be as fruitful as it had been in the liberation struggle,” Meles added.
Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano also expressed hope that cooperation between Africa and China would continue to flourish.
”In areas of peace and security, agriculture, infrastructure, transport, human resource development, health, science, technology, trade, and finance, Chinese entrepreneurs can play a big role,” said Chissano, who is also chairman of the African Union (AU). – Sapa-AFP