President Robert Mugabe on Monday made a rare gesture of acknowledgement to the opposition, saying despite political differences with his government, they remained Zimbabweans.
Mugabe frequently uses public occasions to lambaste the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which he calls a puppet of former colonial power Britain, and has vowed its leader Morgan Tsvangirai will never rule the country.
On Monday, Mugabe — who presided over the distribution of agriculture machinery to farmers as part of a drive to mechanise the agricultural sector — departed from criticising his local opponents, urging them to help develop the country.
”We are happy they are here … and they are part of us in the entity we call the nation and no politics can ever make them alien,” Mugabe said to applause from the gathering during a speech broadcast on state television.
”And therefore that realisation is very important that there must be occasions we must be together. And after all we eat together, don’t we?” said Mugabe, sounding jovial.
It was not immediately clear which opposition members were present at the event.
Mugabe defended his government’s land reforms, a major point of difference with the MDC, which says top government and ruling Zanu-PF officials have benefited from the land seizures.
The veteran Zimbabwean leader accuses the MDC of seeking to topple him from power with the help of funding from the West and says the opposition is prepared to give back the land to white people.
Critics say the land reforms have decimated commercial agriculture and contributed to food shortages. International aid groups last week said a third of Zimbabwe’s population would need food aid by early 2008 after a countrywide crop failure.
Mugabe again accused Britain of leading a Western campaign to sabotage the economy as punishment for the land seizures but said the land reform was irreversible.
”It was wrong for Britain to organise the world into tarnishing us, completely disregarding the area of our difference, which was the land issue,” Mugabe said.
”But we knew we were right in what we were doing, we knew we were right in our politics, we knew we were right in taking our land, and indeed right is becoming our might.”
Mugabe — in power since independence in 1980 — on Monday said London had no right to debate Zimbabwe’s internal issues in its Parliament.
”Debating Zimbabwe as who? Sometimes I wonder whether they are still sane,” he said, taking issue with British Foreign Office Minister David Triesman who last week said Mugabe risked a trial on rights abuses if he did not change his policies.
”He is a madman,” Mugabe said. — Reuters