Posted on 09/03/2002 5:44:07 AM PDT by jstone78
You can keep your aid, Nujoma tells West
TANGENI AMUPADHI
PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma returned from the UN Earth Summit yesterday evening boasting "I told them off" and that Africa no longer needs aid from Western nations.
Nujoma was speaking to Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab and Foreign Affairs Minister Hidipo Hamutenya, in the presence of journalists, at Windhoek's Eros airport after flying in from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg South Africa.
The strident tone was set at the Summit earlier in the day, when he launched a stinging attack on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, charging that he was the cause of Zimbabwe's ills.
As the motorcade waited to whisk the President off to State House, Nujoma briefed his newly chosen Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs chief.
"I told them off," he said to his two Cabinet colleagues as they laughed hesitantly.
"We are tired of insults [from] these people. I told them they can keep their money. I told them that these political good governance, human rights, lesbians ... that they want to impose on our culture ... they must keep those things in Europe."
Said Nujoma: "I had about 40 minutes with BBC ... I told them off."
The statements are the strongest Nujoma has so far made against the industrial world on an international stage.
NBC national radio, whose journalists Nujoma reminded "you are under my control", reported last night that the President told Britain to change its attitude towards Africa because Africans were no longer slaves.
In his interview with the BBC, Nujoma demanded that the European Union immediately lift sanctions against Zimbabwe or else Africans will also "mobilise the African Union to impose sanctions on Europe", NBC radio said.
While an anti-Mugabe march was in progress outside the hall in the plush Sandton suburb of Johannesburg, Nujoma told 1 500 heads of state and government officials that Africa's problems should be laid at the doors of the colonisers and slave masters.
However, Zimbabwe, he told delegates, had an immediate enemy who was in their midst. Then he began to wag his finger in Blair's direction.
"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," Nujoma said.
Blair spoke for 10 minutes after Nujoma. He did not immediately respond to the Namibian President's attack.
The British Prime Minister stressed the main theme of the summit - the need to fight poverty - saying the industrialised world had to open up its markets to developing countries.
Outside the conference later, Blair told the BBC that President Nujoma was defending the "utterly indefensible behind the cloak of colonialism".
A spokesman said the British PM remained unruffled by Nujoma's attack. "(Blair's) focus is exclusively on the outcome of the summit," the spokesman said, adding that Nujoma's words were not a surprise. "He has been saying it for years."
During his summit speech, Nujoma demanded that: "The EU, who have imposed the sanctions against Zimbabwe, must raise them immediately, otherwise it is useless to come here."
The EU imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe following what many foreign and some African observers said were fraudulent elections and in response to the seizure of white-owned farms.
Nujoma said he wondered why Europeans wanted land in Africa, especially Namibia and Zimbabwe, while Africans didn't have land in Europe.
Speaking largely off the cuff at the summit, Nujoma said: "The British colonial settlers in Zimbabwe today, they own 78 per cent of the land in Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe is a tiny country. It has 14 million indigenous [people] who don't have land."
Nujoma blamed most of the problems of Africans and black people in general on slave trade and colonialism.
"The Africans who were taken there are being discriminated [against] in America and South America ... They are underdogs, they are the poorest of the world."
PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma returned from the UN Earth Summit yesterday evening boasting "I told them off" and that Africa no longer needs aid from Western nations.
And good luck to you and your fellow Africans. Now that you've thrown off the shackles of colonialism, just as we did here in the U.S., just as was done in Canada and Austrailia, I'm sure you'll be just as successful as we have been.
With the remarkable record of respect for rule of law, human rights, and peaceful diplomacy that Africa enjoys, I'm sure you'll do very well! You're correct in that rattling the tin cup is no way to manage an economy, so best wishes to you Sam!
Oh, one last thing, please don't come running with your hands out again when it all blows up in your faces.
Owl_Eagle
" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"
This is GREAT NEWS!!! Now let's reduce taxes.
"Africans are no longer slaves."
Take another look, Sam. Africans are enslaved and held in slavery by Muslims in East Africa in large numbers. The horrifying institution of slavery is very much alive in the Islamic theocracies. It is sanctioned by the Koran and the shariah!
(Slavery has been outlawed in the West for well over 100 years, by the way.)
Nujoma is right about one thing. The West is more concerned about gay and lesbian rights in Africa--and about condoms, abortions, and the rest of the NWO program--than they are about murderous racist attacks on white farmers. In the end, we will simply send more food and pretend to ignore the real problems.
Nujoma's position, if true, would cut off bucks to many of these folks and make life in a large western city much less luxorious than it is today. Luxorious? Yes, and any large newspaper could easily document the excesses of African diplomats to the UN in NYC if they wanted to, if they wanted to anger the ghost of Elenor Roosevelt. The NYT has concealed this scandal for many, many years because they are not about to criticize anyone who'd vote for one world (even if they have to be well paid to cast such a vote).
As for Eleanor, I'm sure that facing reality and hypocrisy are some of the most valuable lessons learned in Purgatory.
"In the end, we will simply send more food and pretend to ignore the real problems."
So true! The real problems that Africa faces cannot be discussed honestly and openly anymore than the real racial problems that the U.S. faces.
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