(Last Updated on September 30, 2012 by Editor)
ZIMBABWE – Zambian president has damned Britons and Americans describing his African dictator Robert Mugabe as a much clever man than those who imposed economic sanctions on the continent’s former food basket.
In his now uncharacteristic fashion, Sata was addressing the business community in New York recently saying; “it was most unfortunate that Western countries’” had sustained their sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Sata mocked Western countries had imposed sanctions on Mugaba, he was unaffected and maintained a well nourished lifestyle.
“Today, you have sanctions against Mugabe but the sanctions are not affecting Mugabe. You saw him at the United Nations, he is over-nourished, and Mugabe whom you are trying to target is here but his people cannot afford a meal a day,” he said.
“And you find that Mugabe is much more clever than the people who applied sanctions. He said ‘now the currency to be used in Zimbabwe is American dollars’. So, if he uses American dollars, where are you now?”
President Sata also revealed that President Mugabe had no regard for revered American leader Barack Obama, who father was Kenyan, whom he considers as an agent of imperialists.
“Yesterday [Wednesday] he said; ‘I am not clapping for Mr Barack Obama because Mr Obama is just an imperialist agent’…,” President Sata said.
He said President Mugabe and his inner circle remain insulated from the sanctions hurting the poorest Zimbabweans.
“That country is most unfortunate,” said President Sata in response to a prospective investor seeking to know the relationship between Zambia and Zimbabwe under the current PF regime.
He said there was need to end the Western governments’ sanctions against Zimbabwe as they were no longer necessary.
“Those farmers who made Zimbabwe to get sanctions have started going back to Zimbabwe and they are buying back the farms from those Africans who were given the farms and [President] Mugabe does not interfere,” he said.
Mugabe, a despot, has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 reducing the southern African nation to a dictator state that attracted sanctions from the west.
Zimbabwe is also failing to hold democratic elections but Sata who assumed office through a democratic election heralded in Zambia has turned Africa’s top ally for Mugabe just one year since coming into power.
President Sata has found every opportunity during his international visit to tout the west and chant Mugabe and Zanu-PF slogans.