Mugabe Lets the North Have it

In his widely anticipated statement to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe lambasted the North in general and the United Kingdom in particular and vowed to carry on with his contested land distribution policy.

Calling himself “comrade” and addressing others as such, Mugabe told the summit: “The unilateralism of the uni-polar world has reduced the rest of the mankind to collective underdogs, chattels of the rich, of the wilful few in the North who beat, batter and bully us under the dirty cover of democracy, rule of law and good governance.”

Sustainable development has failed, he said, because of “a neo-liberal model of development propelled by runaway market forces that have been defended in the name of globalisation. Far from putting people first, this model rests on entrenching inequities”.

Claiming to be the victim in a summit in which some consider him a villain, he defended his land access policy and declared: “Inequitable access to land is at the heart of poverty, food insecurity and lack of development in Zimbabwe.”

He called the black majority “the right holders” of land opposed by “internationally well-connected racial minority, largely of British descent and brought in and sustained by British colonialism.”

In remarks not contained in his prepared statement, Mugabe also said he would go along with white farmers owning one farm, but, he said, they want 15, 25 or 35.

He called Rio “a milestone betrayed” and lashed out at the “half-baked unilateral agenda of globalisation in the service of big corporate interests of the North”.

‘The focus is profit,” President Mugabe said, “not the poor, the process is globalisation, not sustainable development, while the objective is exploitation, not liberation.”

Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma yesterday threw his support behind Mugabe and his land redistribution policies and called on the European Union to lift the sanctions imposed on the Southern African country.

“The British, honourable Prime Minister Tony Blair is here. He created a great problem in Zimbabwe and he went and campaigned successfully to the European Union to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe. The British colonial settlers in Zimbabwe today are holding 78 percent of the land in that tiny country of 14 million indigenous people who have no land and whose land has been occupied by a hundred settlers.

“This summit must prevail on the President of the E.U. so that the sanctions against Zimbabwe must be lifted immediately, otherwise, it will be useless to come here and tell us about sustainable development,’’ Nujoma said.

The Namibian president said it was those who committed crimes that forgot easily. “The victim does not forget,” he added.

“We the African people have suffered more than others in the world. We have seen ships sail from Liverpool in the U.K. to West Africa taking slaves across the Atlantic ocean to America. Now the Africans who were taken as slaves are being discriminated against in North America and South America. It must come to an end. We are talking about the equality of human beings. What is equality if the Africans who were taken as slaves up till now are the underdogs and they are the poorest people in the world?’’

The people of the world are looking at the Johannesburg summit and are appraising the implementation of Agenda 21 by the world leaders gathered for the WSSD convention, he added.

“Agenda 21 reaffirms the relationship between environment and development. The very judges of the programme are those who go to bed hungry, those who struggle every day to feed their children. It is those who have to choose between servicing their external debts and providing sustainable living for their people. It is also the many developing countries that do not determine the prices of their commodities.

“If agenda 21 is to succeed, the principle of equality can not be reneged,’’ Nujoma said.