Mugabe Calls The West 'Neocolonialists'

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Hours before the first EU visit to Zimbabwe in eight years, President Robert Mugabe accused the West on Friday of wanting to recolonize his impoverished African nation.

Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain nearly three decades ago, called Western nations "neocolonialists" who can "never be our friends."

"They still want our land," he told the youth wing of his ZANU-PF party. "Why are voices being sounded across the world for regime change to take place in Zimbabwe?"

The 85-year-old leader said his people were being punished and forced to live in poverty because of Western sanctions, which were largely targeted against Mubage and his cronies but also restrict Zimbabwe's ability to raise foreign funding.

This week, African leaders called for the sanctions to be lifted, following Mugabe's February agreement to share power with longtime rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. The move has helped Zimbabwe reverse years of isolation and improve relations with the international community.

EU officials were arriving late Friday on the bloc's first official visit to Zimbabwe since 2002, and Zimbabwe said Friday it would release about 1,500 prisoners from 46 overcrowded prisons under an amnesty program for women, juveniles, the terminally ill and people serving sentences of less than 38 months. Some 150 have already been freed from Harare Central Remand Prison, said prison manager Elizabeth Banda.

EU Development Commissioner Karel De Gucht said the bloc's sanctions against Zimbabwe have "no impact on the common population." He and Swedish Development Minister Gunilla Carlsson, whose country holds the EU presidency, will lead the delegation on its visit through Sunday. They planned to meet with both Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

"This is not about sanctions," he told reporters Friday in neighboring South Africa. "It's not about excuses and disputes. It is about a process than can lead to a normalization of relations."

Western donors have been reluctant to resume aid funding, however, until they see strong signs of reform and end to human rights violations.

Zimbawbe's government has been slow to realize change due to ongoing differences between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party accuses Mugabe's ZANU-PF of stalling on reforms and continuing to attack and harass activists.

The EU delegation met Friday with South African officials outside the coastal city of Cape Town, and issued a joint statement noting Zimbabwe's progress made in implementing the power-sharing agreement but expressing "concerns about the environment" in which the new government was operating.

The statement called for "all parties to remove all obstacles" to the "effective functioning of the inclusive government."

___

Associated Press Writer Courtney Brooks in Kleinmond, South Africa, contributed to this report.

Comments

[richnerd]

01:39 AM on 09/13/2009

Dudes, I just SKYPED with Mugabe for over an hour......the guy is hilarious on the phone, and he does this thing with sock puppets and does the voices in falsetto, I have to say.....he is FUNNY!. I made the mistake of asking what overseas accounts he keeps and DUH!.....he cut me off. I think he has a Mac.

[jsarets]

06:44 PM on 09/12/2009

Western governments subsidize "development loans" to the developing world that finance the Western corporations that extract their natural resources. It is literally neoliberal colonialism.

The Western corporations get all the profits, and the people of the developing world are left with an impossible debt load payable only in foreign currency.

The Mugabe regime IS fraught with corruption and mismanagement, but under these circumstances it would be hard for any government to keep deficits and inflation in check.

Heck, America can't even manage its finances, and the dollar is the de facto global reserve currency!!

[bobo5]

01:43 PM on 09/13/2009

Ian Smith managed Rhodesia very well in spite of sanctions. These were real sanctions.

At the end of his life Ian could walk in downtown Harare without bodyguards and greet people both black and white.

Mugabe, on the other hand, goes out only in an armed convoy. People who get caught up by his motorcade get beaten or shot.

[Klimb]

11:12 AM on 09/14/2009

Blacks could not vote in Zimbabwe until around 1977-1979.

[outnow]

10:21 AM on 09/12/2009

When the British East India Company and the Oligarchy tired to eliminate the American colonists' currency and to tax us without representation, we revolted. The British hired mercenaries to do their fighting in part. In 1814 the British burned the Whitehouse. The British also instgated the Civil War because they needed cheap cotton from the South for thie mills so that they could trade for opium and tea.. "Free trade" was the British idea because they wanted no barriers by way of tarriffs so that they could sell the South British manufactured goods while the Northeastern states were trying to build up their industries and compete.

The British Oligarchy was also behind the move to estatblish the FED because the bank of England runs on fractional reserve banking and fiat money.

FDR tried to defeat British Imperialism and the colonial system but Truman turned around and embraced neocolonialism. Together with Churchill, the vast Ironcurtain Myth evolved to perpetuate what Ike called the MIC to promote neo-imperialism. It isn't the British people, it's their Oligarchy.

Mugabe is right about a few facts that most American flag-waivers and bible thumper seem to miss in their understanding of history. But sanctions destroy the people of a country. They are the collateral damage. Witness Castro in Cuba, for example. We have shouldered the British Imperialistic system including its banking system (instead of the constitutionally-mandated government credit system set up by Ben Franklin).

[deluk]

12:32 PM on 09/12/2009

Is there anything some people won't blame the British for? Now incredibly its' the failure of the American banking system

You're a big country now, your mistakes are YOUR mistakes. and boy there are plenty of those.

[PoliticalJunkie65]

03:47 PM on 09/12/2009

This story and the comments have shocked me like none other.

I am surprised at how innocent these rubes think Mugabe is and how bad they think the British are.

Sure the Brits tried to colonize the world, but in that time who didn't? George Bush could have been charged in this day and age of trying to take over the world.

[Horst]

07:09 AM on 09/12/2009

Overpopulation and corruption are killing Africa. The list of African dictators is long and undistinguished. Blaming all your failures on Belgians and Brits who left half a century ago doesn't solve the problem.

[ArcEnCiel]

10:41 AM on 09/12/2009

Then according to your way of thinking, all Bin Laden has to do is show up after half a century and New York will throw him a party?! I guess my uncle who is pleased with the extradition of the nazi-commander to Germany is wrong?

The last time I checked Zimbabwe only got its nominal independence in 1980 while the land was still in the hands of colonial settlers.

Belgium has never produced a scholar and is only known for chocolate and beer but is doing well mostly due to the plunder of the Congo ("White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is a good factual documentary)

[Horst]

11:39 AM on 09/12/2009

Peculiar reasoning. I'd be the last to defend Belgium but did you know that the mighty Benelux (Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg) have the same combined GDP as the 22 nations of the Arab League.....their modern economic success has nothing to do with King Leopold and his contemporaries.

[EuroPreacher]

12:26 PM on 09/13/2009

As descendants of Europeans, we shouldn't side with people like Leopold II gen-o-cide in the Congo:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4748355130635434378#

[Klimb]

07:50 PM on 09/13/2009

Very disheartening and inhumane...but that is what happened!

[Academic]

05:54 AM on 09/12/2009

What's wrong with speaking the truth? Or does it become a news story when it touches the sensitive raw nerves of the western media and other multi-national corporations that benefit handsomely from the standard lies as they've been doing for generations of exploiting others?

Professor Dr. Collymore

[outnow]

10:30 AM on 09/12/2009

The whites didn't get paid for the land by the British as promised. Cecil Rhodes, a geologist, took one look at geologic formations in Rhodeasa and realized that a vast fortune in unique minerals lay under the ground. Likewise with the Nobels, Rockefellers and Rothschilds when they saw the oil in the Caspian Sea area.

Multinational corporations have their own standing armies and the media mouthpieces to push their view of humanitarian crisies which these same corporations help to create with sanctions.

Did Churchill free India during WW II as we fought "fascism?" Hell no! And because we cannot claim links to "terrorism" we have to use a "humanitarian" argument. One way or the other we will again take over control of these valuable and unique resources.

Iraq is a good example of the neocolonialism and neoliberalism.

[Billy Hell]

12:30 AM on 09/12/2009

For those who think the west's aid to Africa and elsewhere in the world is so wonderful, you need to get your heads around a few FACTS about it and and it's effects on recipient countries. This is a re-post of a comment I made on another article:

The IMF and World Bank with the destructive impact they've had on developing economies across the globe, need to be stopped. Without exception nations receiving "assistance" from them end up being obliged to privatize essential services like water, sanitation and others.

They are also obliged to provide access to resources at a pittance in royalties and taxes. The west, principally the US and Europe, step in and pay poverty wages for labor in industries which include not only resource companies, but clothing manufacturers like GAP who operate sweat shops.

Another condition following the provision of "aid" which initially provides some economic stimulus, is that interest rates be raised to slow down the economy. There's a catch 22 if ever there's been one.

Agricultural trade conditions are imposed with subsidies outlawed (despite subsidies to US agriculture being the highest on the planet), which lead to the decimation of local food production.

Combined these conditions have the effect of maintaining poverty levels, pillaging recipient country resources and creating/m­aintaining a small business elite.

One need look no further than backyard Haiti for a perfect example of how this has worked and "benefited" the people there. There are scores of other examples.

[outnow]

10:39 AM on 09/12/2009

The US has invaded Haiti some six different times. Originally, Haiti was a sanctuary for run-away slaves and was the most democratic country in the Americas. This could not be permitted.

The IMF and the World Bank are just predatory lenders comprised on private banking interests who do to the world what the Fed does to us here in the US.

Officals in our government including Larry Summers are admitting that the middle class will not have its employment back for possibly decades if ever.

The Walls Street crowd sold us down the river as wage slaves without jobs, a planned demolition master-minded in part by the British Oligarchy with their banking system and colonialism.

Again. I have no criticism of the British people themselves. Indeed, they are victims, too.

Arbitraging labor has undermined our own country. You can feel it in the air, smell it in the streets, and we are powerless to act because of our new security state brought to us by that same MIC, MSM, and the fractional reserve and fiat money masters. We are officially a Banana Republic being looted by a rich elite.

[wereeverywhere]

04:17 PM on 09/12/2009

Additionally, the ecological legacy of 'development' aid to African countries has been devastating. It's also eradicated much of the domestic food production so they can use the land for cash crops for export.

[wereeverywhere]

04:45 PM on 09/12/2009

Forgot to add that awful behaviour from the west hardly excuses tyrants like Mugabe who ought to be in prison and is a poster child for what's wrong with Africa.

[bobo5]

10:14 PM on 09/11/2009

Britain participated in talks to transition Rhodesia to Zimbabwe and was against Rhodesia since UDI.

Mugabe should be grateful to Margaret Thatcher for making him dictator.

[Klimb]

06:48 AM on 09/12/2009

Your have reversed the facts.

[bobo5]

01:38 PM on 09/13/2009

Britain wanted Rhodesia/Zimbabwe to be settled once and for all. They wanted to get rid of it. They did. Then Mugabe immediately started killing Ndebele. Nobody cared!!

[Lefty83]

09:38 PM on 09/11/2009

We are! Hello, Iraq?

[Durango]

05:16 PM on 09/11/2009

Tyhat very well might be the case.

But that does not excuse Mugabe's ruining his country.

Here is what I don't understand. In a country, any country there is enough power and wealth to go around. Why be a single party dictator when you can be secure by sharing with your rivals.

Kind of like the do in the west.

Don't try and destroy the opposition. Make a deal with them so you can share the wealth and power. That way you don't always have to be looking behind you.

[BlackYowe]

04:11 PM on 09/11/2009

Well sadly he is right. These wars we are in are only about Oil and gas.

[Forester]

03:38 PM on 09/11/2009

Certainly a true comment, but the messenger kind of douses the impact.
Maybe he just wants more World Bank money?

[ArcEnCiel]

03:23 PM on 09/11/2009

"They keep us angry and when we want some food [the condition is always]: 'your brother gotta be your enemy'; ambush in the night" (Robert Nesta Marley in "Ambush in the night")

[ArcEnCiel]

03:42 PM on 09/11/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABfGrB028-k

[ArcEnCiel]

04:02 PM on 09/11/2009

keep us hungry, erratum, mea culpa!

[FoonTheElder]

03:20 PM on 09/11/2009

After 30 years of Mugabe's dictatorship, where has been accomplished for Zimbabweans? Nothing more than a failed kleptocracy who will do anything to hang onto their power and wealth.

What was revolutionary 30 years ago, is now nothing more than old political rhetoric to keep a failed government in its dictatorial power. The excuses ring hollow when you've been in control as long as Mugabe has.

[ArcEnCiel]

03:28 PM on 09/11/2009

British-led sanctions destroyed Zimbabwe, not Mugabe!

[deluk]

04:12 PM on 09/11/2009

Of course Mugabes wifes habit of flashing the state credit card in the worlds choicest and most expensive locations (those amoral enough to let her in) dosen't exactly help the starving citizens of Zimbabwe.

Let them eat cake, or if they can't afford it grass.

[PoliticalJunkie65]

04:56 PM on 09/11/2009

WTF are you talking about?

Do you even know Zimbabwe?

[ebroadcast]

03:19 PM on 09/11/2009

I call him a "Murderer", so what??

[pghnappyrhino]

04:01 PM on 09/11/2009

that may be true - but is he lying?

[ebroadcast]

04:23 PM on 09/11/2009

Its quite a generalization, but sure there's truth to it. However, I don't waste too much of my time caring what the people like Mugabe of the world think about our nation. Do you?

[zing65]

02:45 PM on 09/11/2009

Long live Robert Mugabe. My question/questions, why have the world allowed Zimbabwe to die from starvation al this time? And now, they (the west) are ready to move in. The always knew Zimbabwe had something they wanted, but they waited until Mugabe time is almost up, (his age) and at the same time, allowing the people to die. He canot be all that bad, after all, he crushed the British chokehold on Zimbabwe. I remember when he seized land from the whites, who had illegally acquired the land, and how did whites and Arabs get into Africa, and set up their own country on smeone else's land? Same thing they did in America. They say Mugabe stole from his own people, I do not know that happened, and just like many, many Zimbabweian love President Robert Mugabe, I love him too.

[ModernTimes1]

02:57 PM on 09/11/2009

"They say Mugabe stole from his own people, I do not know that happened,"

"Physicians for Human Rights sent a delegation to Zimbabwe last month. The team found that the Mugabe regime destroyed the country's healthcare system and pursued policies that ruined what had been a vibrant agriculture, depriving all but a tiny elite of proper nutrition, water, and a sustainable livelihood. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/opinion/23iht-edmugabe.1.19632133.html

"Human rights workers are going into hiding across Zimbabwe as regime launches new wave of arrests
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/14/zimbabwe-mugabe-activist-missing-crimes"

More?

[Intelligentia]

03:18 PM on 09/11/2009

Europeans concerned about the well-being of Africans? What an oxymoron! Let's test how much these Europeans (and the West in general) love Africans and care about the well-being of Africans. Mugabe should say to his countrymen and women: If you believe that I violate your human rights because of your political views, I give you 30 days to leave the country or you will be killed. Then, invite those Europneans and the Western nations who are bleeding for the human rights of Africans to open up their doors and accept every Zimbabwean who is likely to be killed, under their respective asylum or refugee laws. Let's see how much Mugabe is really a bad man and how much these Europeans and Westerner are really concerned about saving the lives of Africans. I am 100% certain Muagabe will turn out to be a very human rights conscious leader in Africa overnight, if it will prevent the influx of Black people in their countries. Mugabe has figured them out and they don't like it. I wish other African leaders will actually open up their eyes and see that these Europeans across the world do not have the best interest of African at heart.

[deluk]

12:21 PM on 09/12/2009

Where did Mugabe send you to study political history, the university of Pyongyang?