HARARE - Deputy Prime Minister, Arthur Mutambara has attacked both President Robert Mugabe and US president Barack Obama for worsening the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans through their rigid positions on sanctions. Mutambara said Mugabe was frustrating ongoing efforts to cajole a
hesitant western community to remove its sanctions on Zimbabwe in order
to restore normal living standards for crisis weary Zimbabweans.
The outspoken deputy premier said Zimbabwe was being held hostage by
Mugabe's indirect sanctions on his own people and declared ones by
Obama.
This country has been under sanctions which we have imposed upon
ourselves for the past 10 years, Mutambara said while presenting his
maiden speech to parliament on Wednesday.
We have imposed sanctions on ourselves through corruption, through misgovernance, through fraudulent elections and violence.
We have no moral authority to demand the lifting of sanctions imposed
on us we have continued to violate the rule of law in Zimbabwe through
farm invasions and failure to release political prisoners.
Mutambara was referring to MDC activists who were abducted by state
security agents in November last year and were produced in weeks to be
charged with a coup plot on Mugabe's government.
Similarly, a fresh wave of farm invasions on white owned land has
rocked the country in the last month as Mugabe seeks to take possession
of less than 400 farms, the last pieces of white owned land which have
been spared from a violent grab which started in 2000.
Mutambara also accused Obama for his government's recent decision to
extend its sanctions on Zimbabwe by another year saying Zimbabwe will
collapse.
Mr Obama extended sanctions by a year, he said.
With all due respect to brother Obama, that decision was based on ignorance and arrogance.
Our country is in the right track, our country is determined to
succeed. So we don't want to see arrogance and ignorance on the part of
Obama because we are determined to solve the crisis in our country.
The US is demanding a return in the rule of law in Zimbabwe in line
with the Global Political Agreement signed last year by President
Mugabe's Zanu PF and the two MDCs.
Mugabe, 85, has refused to abide by the dictates of the agreement which
call for the participation of both parties in appointing officials to
key government posts such as the Reserve bank governor and the Attorney
General.
Political observers say the Zimbabwean leader, is reluctant to disband
his patronage net, which has kept him in power for the past 29 years.