Munesu Chigada
Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-President Mugabe has ridiculed the South African government accusing it of lacking the willpower to empower blacks in a move that could spark off another diplomatic row in the immediate aftermath of Grace Mugabe’s shenanigans in that country recently.
Speaking to captains of industry at State House on Thursday Mugabe scoffed at the freedom South Africa has and said they had simply removed apartheid but were still shackled by whites who are running the economy.
“We didn’t fight just for freedom. I made this remark in regard to South Africa and, what do they call him, Gwede Ma(ntashe), stupidly reacts, yes, they only fought to remove apartheid,” he said.
“The country went to war for a number of years, lost men and women within the country, outside the country in order for us to regain what was our lost country”, he said.
Mugabe contrasted SA with Zimbabwe which he said has wholesomemly defeated the settlers in every sphere, political and economic.
“Defeat the settlers, as we have done and then came those of us who were out and joined those who were here and say together we fought this struggle, together we have won and here is now a free country, ours together.”
“You are just fighting for the removal of apartheid and not for freedom and independence, as we were doing, and they said well freedom was given to us by Britain in 1910.
“It is a legal thing, we cannot change it, why can’t you change it?
“A revolutionary party saying it cannot change it, then all our efforts, even ourselves, could be in vain if we cannot change the laws that our oppressors made,” Mugabe said.
The 93 year old currently reining over a broke and economically comatose country characterised by long bank queues and a 90% unemployment rate hailed Zimbabwe as having the right kind of freedom.
“Ours was not just freedom, we wanted freedom of the nature that gave us independence and the right of ownership of our country. That’s it, that was the difference. The difference is in our system, Mozambican system, Namibia, Angola are on one side, different from South Africa”
“They left the very persons they said had imposed apartheid on them in control of their resources,” Mugabe said.
Cornered by facts Mugabe could however not deflect the accusation that his government has run down parastatals which have become a weight upon the state fiscus.
“We certainly share your concerns over the underperformance of the State enterprises and parastatals, whose current contribution to the national GDP (gross domestic product) is around 11%, 12% down from the peak of 40%,” he said.
Mugabe’s goading rhetoric is set to rile the South Africans even more after the country’s government granted his wife a somewhat clandestine diplomatic immunity which is being contested by human rights lawyers in that country after she bashed a model.
South Africa is currently home to hundred of thousands of Zimbabweans who have fled their own country’s economic woes driven by Mugabe’s fanatical indigenisation drive and inept leadership.
With elections coming in 2018 opposition parties have identified booting out Mugabe and his factionally ridden ZANU party out of power and have formed a coalition.
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