Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/03/2005 10:45:18 AM PDT by MadIvan
ROBERT Mugabe has ruled out ever trying to get back into the "useless" Commonwealth during a blistering attack on Tony Blair and his "gay gangsters".
In his first interview for more than a year, Mugabe also insisted he had discussed the issue at length during a meeting with Prince Charles, where he expressed his admiration and respect for the Royal Family.
The 81-year-old did, however, say he would open his doors to Foreign Office diplomats in a bid to restore relations between Zimbabwe and Britain.
Mugabe has been ostracised by the international community after a million of his own people were made homeless in a campaign to punish opposition supporters for voting against his ruling party Zanu (PF).
The Zimbabwean president said in Harare: "If Tony Blair wants to open his doors and he wants us to open our doors, fine. His people can come here. My people can go to London and mend our relations."
But he dismissed speculation that members of the Commonwealth Secretariat would be able to persuade him to try to rejoin the 53-nations 'club' that takes in roughly a third of the world's population.
He described the Commonwealth as "a useless body which has treated Zimbabwe in a dishonourable manner". Mugabe told the London-based magazine New African that he wants his rejection of the Commonwealth written in the hearts of the people of Zimbabwe.
"We will establish relations with individual members of the Commonwealth; there is nothing wrong with that. And even if we get a Britain which is not run in the same way in regard to our relations as the Britain of Tony Blair - fine.
"We will mend our relations, and this is what I told Prince Charles when we met in Rome recently at the Pope's funeral."
It is the first reference Mugabe has made to his handshake with the heir to the British throne on April 8.
A Clarence House official said: "The Prince of Wales was caught by surprise and not in a position to avoid shaking Mr Mugabe's hand." But according to Mugabe, the two men had a long chat and recalled the night of April 17, 1980, when the Prince attended Zimbabwe's independence celebrations.
"We discussed relations and we said we have tremendous respect for the Queen. Every member of the Royal Family has been to Zimbabwe and we have tremendous respect for every member of that family.
"We have souvenirs of their visits here. We respect them and we continue to respect them." But that "respect" excludes Tony Blair, whom Mugabe says is surrounded by people he refers to as "Blair's gay gangsters".
A source close to the ruling Zanu (PF) party, who asked not to be named, said: "It's a typical Mugabe ploy. He is appealing to the British people over the head of Tony Blair.
"Mugabe is clever. He uses the same tactic with the South Africans and threatens Thabo Mbeki whenever he can. He says to African leaders that Mbeki - who is George Bush's point man in Africa - wants Mugabe to go slow on land reform because he [Mbeki] is a puppet of the white man."
Last week Scotland on Sunday revealed that low-level talks between Zimbabwean and British officials had already opened in Harare on the subject of repairing long-damaged relations before the start of the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.
Mbeki and his Tanzanian counterpart, Benjamin Mkapa, are expected to tell Britain and other G8 countries to seek a fast agreement with Zimbabwe in order to stave off hunger and chaos in a key southern African country.
They would like to see Mugabe retire and live comfortably with his young wife Grace and their three children at a £7m palace in the once all-white suburb of Borrowdale in Harare.
The understanding would be that Britain and the Commonwealth Secretariat would then deal with the next Zimbabwean leader Joyce Mujuru, the vice president, who is married to one of Zimbabwe's richest men, Solomon Mujuru.
He was the commander of Mugabe's military machine during the war against white-ruled Rhodesia between 1972 and 1979.
Meanwhile, diplomats in Harare were stunned to hear that Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of the Nairobi-based UN-Habitat and a close friend of Tanzania's president Ben Mkapa, who supports Mugabe, had told the People's Daily in China that by demolishing thousands of shantytown homes, Mugabe had declared war "not on poor people but on poverty".
She was in Harare to study the scope of the recent eviction of "illegal squatters and dwellers" who, say Zimbabwean insiders, supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change at the election in March. Television pictures showed her being handed a starving baby at Porta Farm in Zimbabwe.
"The baby is starving," she exclaimed, handing it back immediately. "Give it food." But a voice off screen said - "There is no food."
The legal affairs spokesman for the MDC, David Coltart, told Scotland on Sunday that he expected Mugabe to start demolishing the homes of anyone who opposes him. "I have no doubt that if the Mugabe regime can think of a pretext that it can sell to Africa, it will do anything to undermine the opposition," he said.
"That could easily include raiding homes of opposition figures. I suspect that they will allege that leaders are individually guilty of some serious offence and use that to justify further harassment."
He added: "Mugabe said that his intention was to bury the opposition, and he and his cronies will undoubtedly do everything possible to destroy the opposition."
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Killing him would go a long way to solving some of Africa's problems.
He's half right.
When Mugabe first came to power he was a poster-child for the left. A professed Maoist, who at least briefly seemed to promise a secure place in the economy for the white farmers (the backbone of the country's agriculture), he got good press in the "west." Then it turned out that he was indeed a Maoist both in profession and in practice, and not only that, he held homosexuals in less than high regard. He survives because his neighbors, like Mbecki in South Africa, are loathe to criticise. Indeed, South Africa will be the next Zimbabwe.
Funny how the gays, never have anything bad to say about Castro and Mugabe, even though their regimes are the most repressive against homosexuals on the planet.
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"Funny how the gays, never have anything bad to say about Castro and Mugabe"
Are you familiar with Peter Tatchell?
"The silence from the left "civil rights" establishment is deafening."
Well, at least the Left outside the US has the guts to call him to go. Have a look at news here in New Zealand:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10333983
Greens draft bill to stop Zimbabwe cricket tour
03.07.05 UPDATED at 4.25pm
The Green Party has drafted a bill to make it illegal for the New Zealand Cricket team to tour Zimbabwe.
In Wellington today Green Party co-leader Rod Donald said he was seeking cross-party support for the law which would make it an offence for any New Zealand national sporting organisation to send a team on tour to Zimbabwe.
The tour is under fire because of human rights abuses in President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe including the bulldozing of slums which has left thousands homeless.
Australia and New Zealand's governments have already joined forces to oppose the tour. The two countries' foreign ministers issued a statement this week saying they would make joint representations to the International Cricket Council urging rule changes to allow teams to cancel tours to countries where serious human rights abuses were occurring.
They also want the Group of Eight - leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - to tackle the Zimbabwe issue during their summit at Gleneagles, near Edinburgh next week.
They want the United Nations to investigate past and present abuses in Zimbabwe and proposes that President Mugabe be referred to the International Criminal Court.
However, New Zealand Cricket has said the tour must go ahead because of the US$2 million fine the ICC would impose if it pulled out.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3333296a10,00.html
Minto urges boycott on cricket bank
03 July 2005
By HELEN BAIN
Kiwis should boycott Black Caps sponsors the National Bank if the team's Zimbabwe tour goes ahead, says former Springbok tour protest leader John Minto.
The bank has said it is unhappy with the team's plan to tour the troubled African nation next month, but it has not put financial pressure on it to pull out of the tour, saying the decision would be left to the cricketers.
Minto said he and the organisers of a march against the tour, in Auckland on July 16, will encourage National Bank customers to switch to other banks in protest.
National Bank spokeswoman Cynthia Brophy said talk of a boycott was ridiculous and the bank had no control over whether the tour went ahead.
National Bank representatives would meet NZ Cricket this week to discuss Zimbabwe.
ANZ National Bank chief executive Sir John Anderson is also cricket's national chairman and is New Zealand's representative on the International Cricket Council, whose threat of a large fine is preventing New Zealand abandoning the tour. Anderson was overseas and not available for comment, Brophy said.
ANZ bought National Bank in 2003 for $5.7 billion, but maintains the two separate brands, which together are New Zealand's biggest bank.
Minto said the response from the New Zealand public against the Zimbabwe tour could be as strong as its reaction to the 1981 Springbok tour, when thousands of protesters clashed with police.
Public opinion was against the Black Caps tour, he said, because of human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe, including a slum clearance that has left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Minto expected a strong turnout for the Auckland march after a poll found 77% of Kiwis believed the Black Caps should not tour Zimbabwe, compared to only about a third who had opposed the All Blacks touring South Africa in 1976.
"The public has moved on from the idea that you shouldn't mix sport and politics, but the government and cricket administrators are still back in the 1970s."
The Auckland march will urge government and NZ Cricket action to cancel the tour.
Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff met Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in Queenstown yesterday. They agreed on measures to increase international pressure on Mugabe. They include jointly urging the ICC to change its rules to let teams pull out of tours to countries committing serious human rights abuses, and an agreement to explore "with like-minded countries" a ban on all Zimbabwean representative teams.
Goff and Downer also plan to urge G8 members to address the Zimbabwe issue during their meeting in Scotland this week, ask the UN to investigate human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, back moves to expel Zimbabwe from the International Monetary Fund and propose that the UN Security Council refer Mugabe's actions to the International Criminal Court.
Minto was not hopeful Goff would be able to stop the tour. "Phil Goff has given up - it's pathetic. He's talking about (the cricketers) wearing black armbands. He's all bluff and bluster."
NZC chief executive Martin Snedden has said the tour of Zimbabwe will go ahead, despite players' sympathy for Zimbabwe's plight. By banning Zimbabwe from coming here, New Zealand would lose any chance of hosting the 2011 cricket World Cup, losing millions of dollars, Snedden has said.
He said cancelling the tour would mean New Zealand having to pay a $2.8 million fine and compensation to Zimbabwe and would probably lead to it being banned from international cricket.
No, but the gays inside the US are indeed silent. The US Left is unique that they don't link arms with their comrades abroad in this instance.
Hmmm, a wise man once said never to bite the hand of one who might feed you.
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