Mugabe rants at Britain again

In a blistering 1 hour 20-minute attack on his foes after a solidarity march attended by probably the largest number of demonstrators since the country gained Independence in 1980,  Mugabe labeled the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change and the country’s white farmers “traitors” at least 20 times.

Aerial State television footage shot from an airforce helicopter showed hundreds of people in the city’s feeder roads marching to Zimbabwe Grounds, the home of ceremonial people power in Highfield, in compliance with a call by war veterans to stage a million man march in support of Mugabe’s candidacy for the 2008 presidential poll. At least 150,000 people attended the march, touted as a “historic million man march.”

Supporters were bussed into the city on Thursday from the rest of the nine political provinces while the inter-city train service was disrupted to ferry supporters. At Mbare Msika vegetable market and Ximex Mall in the city centre, ruling party militants force marched hapless traders into idling ZUPCO buses.

Mugabe has repeatedly accused the MDC, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai poses an unprecedented challenge to his 27-year rule, and white farmers of sabotaging the economy in a bid to oust him from power.

“There is an orchestrated, much wider and carefully planned regime change plot by internal and external enemy forces with plenty of funding from some commercial farmers and British organisations…,” he said, speaking mainly in his vernacular zezuru language.

He said his government had established that the MDC was getting its dirty money, from the British Labor Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

Mugabe said he was amazed with Britain ‘s fixation with Zimbabwe , slamming the former colonial power for discussing a “sovereign” Zimbabwe in the British parliament.

Britain has no right to be sitting and discussing us in their stupid Parliament, Mugabe said amid wild applause. Britain has ceased to have rationality. Every week they discuss Zimbabwe.

British officials were not immediately able to comment on the accusations.

The MDC has denied receiving foreign funding and accused the ruling Zanu (PF) government of using it as an excuse to crack down on the opposition as the country sinks deeper into an economic and political crisis.

“We are not foreign funded,” Nelson Chamisa, MDC spokesman, told The Zimbabwean.

He said the party was concerned that Mugabe was building a case to ban the MDC before the election, due in March.

Mugabe claimed the deepening economic hardships were a passing phase.

Ngatisadederai kana tava pakati pematambudziko atinawo. We will win the revolution, Mugabe said. Kwete kuti mashaya shuga nhasi moti hurumende yavaMugabe ngatimbochinjai. Shuga ndiyo yatingarasire nyika? Ndiyo yatingarambire chimurenga chedu? Tibude mumusangano wakatipa hunhu? Tirase hunhu wedu hwekuva true revolutionaries? We defeated colonialism here. Takakurira maBritish muno. We are victors forever.

Zimbabwe has been in turmoil since February 2000, when Zanu (PF) supporters, led by veterans of the liberation war, invaded hundreds of farms in support of Mugabe’s land reform program.

The incidence of poverty has doubled since 1980 to about 75 percent of the population and unemployment is soaring amid severe foreign currency and fuel shortages, but Mugabe denies mismanaging the economy. Inflation is at 14,000 percent, the highest in the world, and the beleaguered population scrounges for basics.