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Hands off Zimbabwe, Mugabe tells Blair

WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.

Original Post Date: 2002-09-03  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 9/3/2002 5:02:39 PM
Hands off Zimbabwe, Mugabe tells Blair

[Note how many black leaders quietly support Mugabe and how President Mbeki allowed him double the normal allotted time for his speech. A lot of leaders in Africa quietly support Mugabe. Jan]

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, hijacked today’s proceedings at the Johannesburg earth summit to denounce Tony Blair, telling the British leader: “Let me keep my Zimbabwe.” Ignoring the themes of environmental sustainability and aid, Mr Mugabe instead defended the seizures of white-owned farms. To a round of applause from the conference hall, the Zimbabwean leader declared: “So Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe.” Mr Blair had already left the summit complex after delivering a short speech this morning, in which he called Africa a “scar on the conscience of the world”, and urged leaders to find the political will to implement solutions to the continent’s poverty and ill-health. But speaking on the same platform this afternoon, Mr Mugabe told delegates: “We have fought for our land, we have fought for our sovereignty, small as we are we have won our independence.” Zimbabweans were “prepared to shed our blood” to protect the nation, he said.

Mr Mugabe has vowed to press ahead with the eviction of 2,900 of the 4,500 remaining white commercial farmers despite legal challenges at home and criticism in the west, particularly from the country’s former colonial ruler, Britain. Mr Mugabe said that white commercial farmers often owned several farms and would be allowed to keep at least one. “No farmer is being left without land,” he said. “We are threatening no-one.” Earlier, Mr Blair was also criticised by Namibia’s president, Sam Nujoma, for contributing to southern Africa’s problems. In his address to the summit, Mr Nujoma said: “We here in southern Africa have one big problem, created by the British. The honourable Tony Blair is here, and he created the situation in Zimbabwe. The EU, who have imposed the sanctions against Zimbabwe, must raise them immediately otherwise it is useless to come here. The British colonial settlers in Zimbabwe today, they own 78% of the land in Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe is a tiny country. It has 14 million indigenous [people] who have no land.”

Responding to Mr Nujoma’s comments, Mr Blair said during his visit to Alexandra: “What the president of Namibia said is what he has always said – he said it at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting a few months ago. It doesn’t make it any more sensible, however.” He stressed the size of Britain’s aid budget to Africa and told reporters: “We don’t need to be told the importance of Africa.” Mr Blair said Mr Nujoma was “defending the utterly indefensible” but stressed: “That is a minority view. The vast majority of African leaders fully support the principles of good governance we stand for. It’s important we do not get the idea that is the voice of Africa, it is not.” There were also reports that Mr Mugabe walked out of the international gathering as Mr Blair was speaking.

The shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, criticised Mr Blair for failing to deal with the issue of Zimbabwe in his speech. “What we have heard from the prime minister today is a lot more reheated and high-flown rhetoric,” he said. “We recognise that the summit must address many important issues. It is, however, astounding that in a speech dealing with famine, poverty and child suffering, the prime minister made no mention of the many thousands of people in southern Africa whose lives are being destroyed because of Robert Mugabe’s obsessions. The nearest the prime minister came to addressing the horrors of Zimbabwe was to refer, in Mozambique, to Mugabe’s ‘incompetence, mismanagement and corruption’.” “Those who are being persecuted, tortured, raped, murdered and deliberately starved will find little recognition in these mealy mouthed words,” he added.

The EU slapped sanctions on Mr Mugabe’s government after presidential elections in March, which the EU deemed illegitimate, and the seizure of white-owned farms. One of the Zimbabwean leader’s sternest critics, New Zealand’s prime minister, Helen Clark, blamed his policies for exacerbating a food crisis in southern Africa. “In one case this disaster has been made much worse by deliberate and cynical government policies,” Ms Clark said in her speech without naming Mr Mugabe. Mr Blair, who took the floor about 10 minutes after Mr Nujoma’s finger-jabbing tirade, did not respond to the accusations. “[Mr Blair’s] focus is exclusively on the outcome of the summit,” a Downing Street spokesman said, adding that the Namibian president’s words were not a surprise. “He has been saying it for years,” the spokesman said.

About 1,500 people, mainly black South Africans, gathered on Monday for an anti-Mugabe march outside the conference centre. “Jail Mugabe, Free Zimbabwe” and “Mugabe Get Out of South Africa”, they chanted. Jenni Williams, a spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe white farmers’ pressure group Justice for Agriculture, said Mr Mugabe was redistributing land to his cronies and allies. “We hunger for food, yet Mugabe is taking away the land that has fed us. We hunger for peace and yet Mugabe has now formed a war cabinet to fight his own people,” Williams said.

Source:Guardian (UK)
Published:Mon 2-Sep-2002
URL: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID…br>