South Africa needs another liberation, says Mugabe
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South Africa needs another liberation, says Mugabe

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe said South Africa needed another liberation because white people still owned most of the land and had the most opportunities.pg-38-mugabe-1-getty

“It is a matter of the whites keeping things to themselves and the political dispensation brought in by Mandela, (that) did not address the question of disparities between whites and blacks, and this is what must be addressed,” he told journalists in Gaborone today following a “familiarisation visit” to the Southern African Development Community secretariat headquarters there.

He was responding to a question from City Press on whether he felt the South African government has done enough following attacks against foreign nationals.

Mugabe said he was satisfied with the South African government response to the attacks, but it was understandable in the light of the unemployment and competition for jobs.

He said white people still had the mostemployment opportunities and most of the land was also in white hands.

“They are not talking in the country of whites being unemployed. It is blacks who are unemployed, this is what they must address first and foremost,” he said.

Mugabe, however, also added that xenophobic attitudes needed to be addressed. “People from different tribal backgrounds may be resenting, it is a process that they will have. Even in our own countries, we have little resentment of outsiders, but it doesn’t matter if it is little, that means one or two people may be expressing it.

“But the majority are for inter-mixture.

“But then you have people who are in fact those we called oppressors yesterday still in the position, occupying the positions, and (hanging on to) the advantages and the opportunities that they allocated to themselves during colonialism, and they still hang on to them and do not want to let go, and then you have a difficult situation, and this is what South Africa must be helped to overcome.”

He said countries like Zimbabwe have overcome oppression and inequalities of land ownership.

“But if you go to SA it is a different story, we need to help them, they need another liberation,” he said.

During the press conference Mugabe and SADC executive secretary Stergomena Tax, who flanked him, went to great lengths to dispel rumours that his reception in Botswana was inadequate.

Relations between Mugabe and Khama, the deputy chairperson of SADC, have been strained.

Khama has been critical of Mugabe in the past and Botswana differed from SADC on the Zimbabwean elections in 2013. SADC declared the elections free and fair.

Mugabe said his visit to Botswana was not a state visit, so it did not have to be accompanied by an elaborate ceremony.

Mugabe did, however, have a private lunch with Khama at State House in Gabarone before the press conference. “Our tummies are full,” Mugabe joked with journalists.neww24

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