Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government reacted on Thursday to criticism of its regime by new United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling her ”a fascist”.
At a hearing to confirm her appointment as secretary of state this week, Rice referred to Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Burma, Belarus and Cuba as ”outposts of tyranny”.
In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Zimbabwe’s anti-corruption minister, Didymus Mutasa, angrily dismissed Rice’s remarks.
”When comments like that come from fascists like Condoleezza Rice, we are not really worried,” Mutasa said. ”They [the United States government] have no morals.”
He said the US government resented it when ”black people stood up for themselves.”
”They are jealousy [sic] of countries like China because they are governing themselves,” he said.
”They are aiming to treat us the same way as they are treating Iran,” he added.
Zimbabwe is in its fifth year of crisis marked by a campaign of brutal repression by Mugabe’s security forces and ruling-party militias against a non-violent opposition party that observers say has been cheated of victory in the past two national elections. — Sapa-DPA