Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe, under fire at home over a crumbling economy, said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire.
”To tell you the truth, until and unless we put our act together, organise and start pulling our resources together, we will never ever prosper from any aid from any source outside Africa,” he told a rally on the fringes of an African Union (AU) summit in Accra.
About a thousand placard and flag waving Ghananians, many sporting T-shirts with the portrait of the 83-year old Mugabe, attended the rally at Kwameh Nkrumah Memorial Park in the Ghanian capital.
”We must unite, not just politically but economically,” he told a cheering crowd in the city hosting a twice yearly meeting of African heads of state.
The three day summit has been billed by some as an opportunity to forge a so-called United States of Africa, with Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi calling for a common defence and foreign policy.
”Although there is the umbrella of unity, but within this unity we are not united,” he said.
Punctuating his speech with a reference to Ghana’s revered architect of pan-Africanism, Mugabe said today’s Africa is lacking the vision Nkrumah outlined in 1963 when the predecessor body of the AU, the Organisation of African Union was formed.
”Nkrumah wanted the creation of a United States of Africa in 1963, but others said it was too early, and 44 years later, others are still saying we are not ready,” he said.
”We are producers of oil, but look at what is happening, mismanagement and corruption. We must correct this,” said Mugabe in a country which is soon to join the club of Africa’s oil producers after a British firm last month announced the discovery of oil off Ghana’s shore.
”If we were to organise ourselves in a unified form, in a united way, we would certainly emerge as a prosperous continent,” he said as his country is reeling from a world record annual inflation rate of more than 4 000 percent and food shortages.
Mugabe did not mention the crisis at home, but instead went into details of how his country was pushed to the edge and seized land from white Zimbabweans on grounds that the colonial ruler, Britain had reneged on its pledges to pay for a land-reform scheme.
Mugabe also took a swipe at the United States President George Bush and Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair, over the Iraq war.
”These are the two people who have spoiled our world. And now they come up with all kinds of things, saying they will help Africa,” he said.
Mugabe invited to summit
Portugal is prepared to invite Mugabe to a summit of European and African leaders in Lisbon this year despite an European Union (EU) travel ban and sanctions against the dictator and figures in his regime.
Senior officials in Portugal, which took over the six-month presidency of the EU on Sunday, said they were not keen to welcome Mugabe to the December summit, but would do so if that was the price of salvaging a meeting they see as their policy priority while in charge of the EU.
”This is a summit for all African countries at the highest level, heads of government or heads of state. All African countries must be invited,” said a senior Portuguese official.
Another senior official said the government could try to defuse the issue by having the AU, rather than Portugal or the EU, invite Mugabe to Europe for the meeting on December 8 and 9.
Britain, the leading voice in the EU supporting five years of sanctions against Mugabe, and a travel ban on his entourage, is fiercely opposed to having Mugabe at a European summit.
Officials in Brussels say most EU members, including the Portuguese, do not want Mugabe in Lisbon, but that the African Union of 53 countries, chaired by Ghana, is demanding that Zimbabwe be treated the same as everyone else.
The last EU-Africa summit took place in 2000. Plans for a similar meeting in 2003 collapsed because of the Mugabe dispute. The Portuguese are determined their planned summit will not fail. ”We defined a summit with Africa as a priority for our [EU] presidency. We want to leave our mark on European foreign policy,” said José Sócrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister. – Reuters, Sapa-AFP