The Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, angrily denies that his country needs food aid and rejected charges that his government inflicts human rights abuses in an interview with Sky News released on Monday.
In the interview, the first Mugabe has given to British media for several years, the leader clung to his position that the Blair government is responsible for whatever problems his country is facing.
He also attacked Bishop Desmond Tutu and Bulawayo’s Archbishop Pius Ncube as ”unholy men”. Critics in Zimbabwe say the interview exposes Mugabe as a leader out of touch with the reality of his country.
”He is delusional about food production, in denial about violence, and abusive about Desmond Tutu, Pius Ncube and other critics,” said Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent.
”This is self-evidently a leader who has lost direction. All he can do is shake his fists at a world he no longer understands.”
Mugabe said his government would not accept international food aid in the coming year.
”We are not hungry. It should go to hungrier people, hungrier countries than ourselves,” he said. ”Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked, we have enough.”
He said Zimbabwe would produce 2,3-million tons of maize this year, though independent and international food monitors have dismissed the figures as fantasy and completely unrealistic. They warn of widespread famine if Mugabe does not permit international aid.
Mugabe rejected charges that torture, rape and terror are being inflicted by his youth militia on the opposition and the wider population.
”These are the allegations being made by people who do not want us to train the youth, who fear perhaps we are training the youth to be nationalistic, to respect their own culture and respect the African personality,” he said.
He denied documented reports of systematic human rights abuse by police and other groups, suggesting that any violence came from over-zealous supporters of his Zanu-PF party.
”We have millions of supporters in the country but you also get small groups naturally that act in order to demonstrate that they are strong in particular areas especially when they are provoked and in the majority of cases because of the provocation of MDC.”
Mugabe’s assertions fly in the face of several reports by human rights groups which state that police and groups allied to his party are responsible for more than 90% of the political violence in the country.
When confronted with the criticism of the retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu that Mugabe now resembles a caricature of an African dictator, he dismissed the Nobel peace prizewinner as ”an angry, evil and embittered little bishop”.
Mugabe said the archbishop ”was a frightened man during the apartheid era and the little he did was perhaps just to criticise in an innocent way. When called upon to do something that would distinguish him as supporter of the ANC, he didn’t.”
He also turned on the Catholic Archbishop of Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, who has claimed that 10 000 Zimbabweans in his Matabeleland region died of hunger-related causes last year.
”That’s another Tutu, the bishop, an unholy man, he thinks he is holy and telling lies all the day, every day,” said Mugabe.
”Oh come on, 10 000 people, where did they die? Even show me a single person who died of hunger.”
Some Zimbabweans said the interview demonstrated that Mugabe has lost touch.
Mugabe repeated the assertion that he intends to serve out his current term, which lasts until 2008, when he will be 86.
He said he has no successor in mind. – Guardian Unlimited Â