“You go back to the same people we kicked out of Africa yesterday and say we want help. Yes, of course they will give you help provided you say yes to them. So there is no longer the thinking of Nkrumah in most of Africa, sad. The reliance on the resources of Europe…Reliance, in some cases, 60% on foreign aid.”
Mugabe’s rant is both an attempt to detract from Zimbabwe’s woes and to vent his frustration at being snubbed by Obama. Ever since 2000, he has become angrier the more he is rejected by the West. The phrase ‘sour grapes’ comes to mind.
Mugabe gladly accepts millions in aid from the EU, Britain and America to feed his starving people, put medicines into empty clinics and roofs on dilapidated schools, and then has the audacity to speak of ‘reliance on the resources of Europe. The Beam project for underprivileged pupils had collapsed until Britain came to the rescue. Repairs to the dam wall at Kariba will be paid for by the EU.
Post published in: News
If Mugabe was white, would there be all this bitter rhetoric against a man who will not be swayed by western promises. Zimbabweans have short memories. They forget how the Brits and Italians built Kariba on the back of the Bemba and Batonga fishermen. Or, how they built many hospitals and blocks of flats etc in the cities on the blood and sweating backs of the Ndebele and Shona and Karanga etc etc. for the whites in white aras. But it was all at their own discretion as to where and what, with no input from the actual original inhabitants of the land, while they let Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front deprive the indigenous people of the country of an all embracing Education with their so-called Separate Development strategy. Sure there was a token school here and there in the rural areas, but then most of the rural kids were schooled at Mission stations.
Mugabe himself is a product of that. Now the boot is on the other foot as it were. Sure he has made mistakes, but Ian Smith too made some whoppers but he is still a hero amongst some Rhodesians, and I for one will never understand why. I see UDI was an excuse to control the blacks. No other reason, and all this all boils down to two strong men at loggerheads each fighting for what they believed in until the bitter end, when the first one drew the line in the sand, and no one will understand why the other will not toe the line. If the West feel they are such magnanimous heroes with their endless pot of donations and guilt loans, why don’t they take the first step in the first place and put an end to this endless nonsense – for the sake of the Nation of Zimbabwe’s people. They need not be afraid. Zimbabwe can hardly declare war. Or are they, and of what? Losing face, methinks?
And what has Mugabe done for his people lately?
“The reliance on the resources of Europe…Reliance, in some cases, 60% on foreign aid,†Mugabe said.
Mugabe did not fool anyone; 98% of Zimbabwe’s medicine required is donor funded and has been the case since 2008!