President Robert Mugabe lashed out at Britain on Friday, saying Zimbabwe can ”never be friends” with the former colonial ruler in a eulogy at the funeral of a liberation war veteran.
Mugabe blamed Britain, which ruled Zimbabwe until independence in 1980, for ”the great suffering of our people, the oppression that took place, the loss of our land, the suppression of our freedoms.
”That enemy was Britain … and its allies. They can never, ever be our friends, indeed, never our friends.
”Whatever they do, however they think, they remain colonial enemies,” Mugabe told supporters and mourners at the funeral of former cabinet minister and liberation war veteran Mark Dube.
Relations between Zimbabwe and Britain have soured over the southern African country’s land reform programme that saw thousands of white farmers evicted from their land that was handed over to landless blacks.
Mugabe also warned supporters to ”take care … that we do not place this country in the hands of those who are ready to sup and dine with the enemy.
”Those who are ready to rush to the enemy and call him a friend, forgetting that yesterday he was the cause of the bloodshed of this country,” said Mugabe in an apparent reference to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which he has accused of being a British stooge.
The four-year-old opposition MDC has posed the greatest challenge to Mugabe’s uninterrupted two decades in power. ‒ Sapa-AFP