Mugabe takes swipe at ‘treacherous’ white people
ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe yesterday reminded Botswana’s President Ian Khama that the two countries, whose relations are strained, were once close.
Mugabe was delivering his farewell speech as outgoing chairman of the Southern African Development Community.
He also used the podium at the opening of the annual SADC summit in Botswana to take yet another stab at South Africa’s white population.
Speaking at the International Convention Centre in Gaborone, Mugabe recalled how Botswana helped him travel to the founding summit of the Organisation of African Unity, now the AU, in Ethiopia in 1963.
Mugabe, who was handing over the SADC chairmanship to Khama, elicited a smile from his usually stern-looking successor when he recalled the history of his father, Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana.
Relations between Mugabe and Khama have been strained by the latter’s criticism of developments in the neighbouring country. He was the only SADC leader to question the credibility of Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections, which Mugabe’s Zanu-PF won outright.
Mugabe said Seretse Khama, together with Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Mozambique’s Samora Machel, were some of the founders of the so-called Frontline states, the countries, now in SADC, which led the fight against apartheid and colonialism in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Many founders are now dearly departed but I am glad that Seretse Khama, the father, could see Zimbabwe become independent.”
Mugabe recalled how Khama senior lost his chieftainship because he fell in love. His “sin” was that it was with a white woman, Ruth Williams, which meant apartheid South Africa exerted pressure on Botswana.
Mugabe said things had changed for the better, thanks to those who had fought for freedom.
“Look at us now. Look at South Africa. I think they were the most vehement, the whites there, against the marriage. But today it is as if, oh, oh, they always were nonracial,” he said in a mock English accent to laughter from the audience. “Nonsense. Don’t accept that. You see their treacherous behaviour. But I don’t say ‘revenge’, no.
“We are a free people, a loving people, humanitarian. Full of joy, the Africans are, laughing and dancing all the time. But let them not play the fool with us, then the devil in us will emerge.”
In his speech, Khama joked that over the past year when he was deputy SADC chair, people in Botswana had referred to him as “Mugabe’s deputy”.
He thanked Mugabe for his tenure and praised him for seeing that the region’s industrialisation strategy was adopted under his tenure – at a SADC summit in Harare in April.