Namibian President Sam Nujoma on Monday lashed out against ”imperialists” who he said either steal Africa’s wealth or engineer wars to prevent the continent from benefiting from its riches.
”Nobody will bring peace to Africa if we don’t do it ourselves. Africa must stop living on handouts of imperialist countries,” Nujoma told the opening of a parliamentary forum in the Namibian capital.
”Africa has more riches than Europe and America together,” he said at the forum of the 13-nation South African Development Community (SADC).
”The imperialists take our resources or make us fight against each other,” Nujoma added.
He singled out as an example the Democratic Republic of Congo where fighting reignited over the weekend and criticised members of the forum for not speaking out against the violence there.
”The SADC parliamentary forum is a representative institution of the people of our region politically, but to my dismay, wrong acts, including the military invasion of a member state of the SADC, the DRC, by some war-mongering countries a few years ago resulted in the genocide of more than three million persons, mostly women and children and the elderly,” Nujoma said.
”However, in the face of these barbaric acts, SADC parliamentarians remained silent,” he said.
”I never heard one word from the parliamentarians of the SADC parliamentary forum — what are you doing?” he asked.
”The reality is that this massacre is caused by instigations from imperialist countries because of the abundant riches, especially the mineral resources which the DRC possesses,” he alleged.
Established in 1996, the SADC parliamentary forum brings together about 1 800 lawmakers from member countries to enact measures that are to have a regional impact. — Sapa-AFP