REFLECTIONS AT 82

H. E. the President, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe's Interview with Newsnet aired on the 19 th of February 2006.

PRESIDENT Robert Gabriel Mugabe (RGM) is a veteran liberation fighter, national, regional and international leader, who has been hailed the world over for his consistency in fighting to defend the cause of the common man. He holds strong, unwavering, views on a variety of issues and every year, prior to his birthday celebrations, Newsnet (NN) holds an interview with him to tap from his vast knowledge on a wide range of issues. Below are excerpts of this year's interview.

NN: Zimbabwe is holding its Silver Jubilee, what is the national question 26 years after independence?

RGM: Our national question divides itself into sub questions. It's the issue of national sovereignty that is, what we fought for the freedom of the people to decide. The freedom of the people to set up their own Government, the freedom of the people to seek development in the way they think best suits them. When we got our independence in April 1980 we all assumed that the fight for independence had come to an end and indeed it had come to an end with the decolonisation of our country. The assumption of our people of the right to rule themselves, the introduction of the constitution which we worked out with the British at Lancaster House in 1979 and therefore the path was now set for us in a multi-faceted way to go about our development programmes as they were intended to benefit our people.

At that stage, we then transformed the factors, I want to call it the instrument of independence into the instrument now of empowerment. An instrument that enabled us and still enables us to pursue the goals of our own people, the instrument that enables us now to freely interact with the rest of the world and present ourselves as a sovereign Zimbabwe.

But that instrument is being challenged by the erstwhile colonial power Britain, which under the present regime of Tony Blair (British Prime Minister) wants to assume the right to determine who shall govern Zimbabwe, the right to determine the way Zimbabwe should go economically and therefore the fight that we waged before independence is still the fight we must wage. This time not in order to acquire sovereignty but in order to defend and protect it, and protect it against the machinations of those who seek to interfere in our domestic affairs but at the same time also keep our people united, because sovereignty is not sovereignty of one person, it is the sovereignty of the entirety of our nation. Our nation must remain united, as united now as they were before independence. Now united in defence of it and not in order to achieve it because we achieved it in April 1980.

NN: But associated with the coming of independence in 1980 the argument is that one of Zimbabwe's problems has to do with a handed-down constitution which has seen many patches, the latest being Constitutional Amendment Act (No. 17). Is this the last Act?

RGM: As to whether it is the last Act or not, I can't say, but there is never the last anything to a document that is the basis of people's power, that is the basis of ensuring the governance of a country, the people always will want to transform their situation and if they don't have the constitutional rights to do so then amendments will be sought and effected.

I therefore can not say it is the end obviously it should never be the end and constitutions are there for the people and not the people there for the constitutions and so the people at every stage will look at their constitutions and see, judge whether it facilitates their activities. Whether it enhances their sovereignty, whether it enables them to participate fully in the formulation and implementation of the programmes that are meant for their development.

NN: There is a difference in terms of the kind of people you have today, when you look at the road to Independence it did yield a lot of nationalists. There was a rise in nationalism yet when you come to today, it is some of the people who are, we have a number now, undoing the gains of Independence. Is this a problem of nation building or is it a reflection of a liberation struggle that was aborted?

RGM: There is never a moment, never a stage when people can be as united as to amount to the totality of the population agreeing on the path of development on any programme or policy that might be formulated or envisaged by those in power. You will never get 100 percent support at any time, never. Even as we fought for independence, we still had renegades, we still had those who supported the regime here and that's why you had Zimbabwe-Rhodesia or Rhodesia-Zimbabwe a two-headed creature that was born out of the association of Bishop Muzorewa and Ian Smith, and so you will never get total support, but as long as you have a vanguard group that has substantial support, the majority of the people supporting it, then you will move forward.

Yes, we had the support, mainly of the youths who gave up their schooling, their jobs in order to support the liberation struggle, participate in it, sacrifice their lives, die for the liberation struggle and it was through them that we won the day, we won our freedom and we won the national sovereignty that I was talking about a while ago, but it was not all of them, it was some of them, some who had properly - you know - digested the subject of liberation, who had thought of the oppression that the country had seen for 90 years and had come to the conclusion that it was right and just for them to make the sacrifice they made. They made it for the rest of the people and there it was in April 1980, we delivered. This one product which shall never again - you know - be lost to the people, the Zimbabwe which belonged now to the people and was no longer Rhodesia. Today we have the same situation as we try to forge ahead with policies meant for the development of the people.

There are others who think otherwise, who have perhaps their own policies that might be opposed to our own, still others who align themselves with the enemy, those who seek to interfere in our domestic affairs. I made reference a while ago to the fact that our erstwhile coloniser Britain still wants to govern us, albeit by remote control, but remote control, as you are aware, will operate when the power, or the force or the energy is directed at that which it is meant to drive, but in our particular case, the front runners, those who are ready to give up or shall I say to sell their birthright and become stooges to others. Those who think we are an inferior race to the whites and let the whites continue to have a dominant stake in our lives they align with the Blairs, they align with whites, the white community here and they oppose the policies of the nationalist movement - that is Zanu-PF - and they oppose us in every way possible and they do so, not just for themselves, but indeed for those who they have made their masters.

You have these but you still have others who think no, yes of course as long as we can make money in the situation why bother about politics, why bother about who governs it does not matter as long as I can make money. You know the neutral characters and the selfish characters we have many, many, many amongst them and you have seen that in certain sectors of our country the financial sector for example, even the little monies that people had banked with the institutions these people created were robbed, taken away from them by the selfish persons who in fact do not espouse the same ideals as some of us who think, well the nation is there just to serve them, the nation is there just to enrich them, the nation is there to ensure that they and their families prosper whatever happens.

NN: But given this scenario where we have foreign machinations as evidenced by the opposition that is driven largely by a foreign agenda, we also have people within the ruling party having a diversity of opinions. Are there enough cadres to safeguard the legacy?

RGM: Yes, I want to believe there are enough cadres, some are still developing and I am sure there will be those who will be prepared in the future to uphold the right of sovereignty of our nation and will be prepared to sacrifice their lives in defence of it. I think there are, we have them, we have them in the party and we are trying to develop them as much as possible all the time and I think we are succeeding in developing out of our youths those with real commitment, genuine commitment to safeguarding the national sovereignty of our country.

NN: You say independence brought with it instruments to allow Zimbabweans to develop themselves and last year you appointed a Cabinet that you dubbed the Development Cabinet. Do you have a Development Cabinet that has met your expectations?

RGM: To some extent yes but to a greater extend no. No, no, no there is a lot of self-centredness that one sees amongst some of my ministers. You see when we talk of national development and a Development Cabinet, we want to see each and every minister, each and every minister moving towards the attainment of the goals set for the particular ministry. And there has been not that much vigour shown and therefore there hasn't been the necessary accomplishment of the goals that we had set for ourselves. You can just look at how we tried to plan for our agriculture this year. Why should we have run short of fertilizer, it was not because we didn't have the money, it was because people had not worked vigorously, you know, to ensure the fertilizer was in place, the seed was in place and the tillage equipment was also in place. We had to run belatedly to try and get these in place, and the season good as it is and the crops good as they are would have been much better if things had been in place, that's that.

Look at the mining sector. We pledged to ensure that the mines would operate full blast. That the leakages we had experienced earlier would not occur. Last year, if you take gold alone we had about 22/23 tonnes delivered to the Reserve Bank, last year of course means 2004, at the end of 2005 only 11 tonnes, where did the half go. I say half but it's much more than half, you see the tonnage. Half because the previous year we had 22 to 23 tonnes but by the end of 2005 it was 11 tonnes. Again we didn't prevent the leakages, externalisation; we did not supervise the mines sufficiently. We were naïve in allowing the situation to continue.

And that's not all, you go even to the manufacturing sector. We were to have revived the factories that were closed by our enemies some of whom went to South Africa. We were to have given funding, enough funding to those who were shrinking because they lacked resources.

This did not happen fully, it may have happened in respect of one or two factories and again we see lack of performance. I can go on and on like that. There have been some improvements with regard to certain sectors. Ministries, the social ministries have done their best, education has sustained the system, but even there because of school fees, and the price of education now has gone up and it might very well inhibit the performance of the sector.

In the ministry of health, yes there has been an improvement, the drug supply level has improved immensely but there are still shortages there. We ascribe that to the hard circumstances we are going through. So the Development Cabinet has not adequately performed.

NN: And the question is while there are clear indications of letdowns, lack of supervision, lack of follow-ups, there doesn't seem to have been anybody who has been axed from the job for poor performance.

RGM: The axing or the reshuffling is done in accordance with the timing and the strategy that the leadership has and if it hasn't been, it doesn't mean it will not be done.

NN: You have always advocated for a departure from bookish economics, in favour of people-centred policies that take into consideration socio-political issues. Now when you look at inflation, right now it is hovering around 613 percent. Do you see light at the end of the tunnel?

RGM: Yes, sure. I was just discussing the same matter. Just now we were arguing with the Minster of Finance and the Minister of Justice after discussing certain things. Of course the view of the ministry is that we be bookish, we continue to uphold the economic tenets as they are written in books.

And if anyone has ever read economics, you know very carefully, he or she would have concluded that at the end of the day that what are called laws, economic laws are all based on the fundamental law of probability, that you can't plan even if you are an owner of a factory, that this given amount of capital plus so much labour and of course the entrepreneurial ability that you add to it as the supervisor, the manager, that combination of factors will necessarily produce what you had planned as a possible product.

Say the product might be X-Y that's what you plan for, but you will all the time say "things being equal," that's what you will produce, X-Y. You don't even know whether the labour will be constant or there will be strikes, you don't even know whether the weather, the climatic conditions will enable you to produce. Supposing it's a textile factory, the cotton in the fields might suffer from too much rain and therefore you may not get the supply that you want of raw materials that go into production and X-Y will not come as X-Y it will be minus something.

So you can't be mathematical about the principles and rules of economics. In our particular circumstances even the laws of demand simply don't operate as they should in a normal situation. We have sanctions that have been imposed on us. There has been drought and the consequence of that is there will be shrinkage of production of certain commodities.

The people will starve, start asking for food; the climatic conditions demand that you act in providing the people with free food. They haven't got resources and the best you can do is to say instead of making it really free, let them work for it just as we do and it becomes food for work or something or work for food and so on.

In those circumstances when you are short of money, your revenues are falling, you have to print money, you just have to, to save the situation and those who say printing money will cause inflation are suggesting that you fold your hands and say ah let the situation continue as it is even if the people starve; oh the good God up there will see to it that they survive. The good Lord up there has given you brains, you know. The brain must function not in a stereotyped manner but in a flexible manner, you must turn your mind and say shall I allow my people to starve merely because the laws of economics say I must not print money. No, I will print money today so that the people can survive, so the workers can remain alive and tomorrow it is the same workers, when the situation is better, that I will need now for production purposes. So when you have a situation of discomfort, hardships as we have been going through, you just use your brains. Yes, the rules will remain there as guides but guides allowing you to use your mind in a flexible way so that those guides will not become tight rules, rigid rules, otherwise really you are not a good economist at all.

NN: There have been two major land audits since the fast track land reform began in the year 2000, with allegations of impropriety being raised regarding the uptake of land. We also have similar allegations being raised in connection with allocation of stands under the national housing delivery programme Operation Garikai/ Hlalani Kuhle. There have been other allegations of corruption in the fuel industry, in grain and other serious allegations of corruption in other circles. Is the moral fibre in Zimbabwe failing?

RGM: That is a question you and I should answer, our families and the parents should answer that question, managers in business should answer that question even the churches, the pastors who are very glib in propounding the scriptures must tell us what has happened. Yes, I think there is a lot of rotten fibre, all is not lost of course, but the frequency, the incidence of corruption must worry everybody, everybody wherever we are. It is not just that it is really a kind of decadence, moral decadence, which has affected us. Where even a father will abuse a little baby, two-year-old, and it's happening quite frequently, theft in business, theft and corruption in Government.

Yes, sure our moral fibre has yielded but when you look at the situation elsewhere you say ah we are not just alone in this road to hell. We are walking together with others and of course being driven by Lucifer himself, so the Bible says, and we are going his way.

Even members of the church, pastors, they are going in that direction and you hear that some high-ranking in a church is sleeping with a girl as a girlfriend, manje zvinogorevei izvozvo? Ndiko kuworaka kwatava kuitaka ikoko.

We have said the churches, our own customs, family culture, family authority, all these institutions must now get up and ask that question is our moral fibre gone, what has happened?

Let's all work to revive our morality now, but we are not as bad as other societies. Chivinge propose to Mutasa somewhere, man to man and a woman will propose to a woman that is even worse, abhorrent but that is happening. And for that matter the church blesses them, gives rings and I don't know who gives whom the ring or they give each other rings.

So whilst we admit that our moral fibre, yes has given way but others it is completely down, the whole fibre they no longer have it, the moral fibre is gone. But that's no cause for us to rejoice that some are worse than others, the little rottenness, or that rotten nature of our society or our morals must be got rid off, and we must work in our institutions, work in our own traditions, the families, in our own societies, you see, to prevent that. And of course of course part of it is due to our aping, I call it aping the developments, fashions elsewhere. Vana vedu just now zvavanoda kupfeka tumamini tunosvika umu, you see, imwe iyi inonzi chii, guvhu out, guvhu out, tinoridii, guvhu rinonzi out? Kuti kana tikariona kuti tidii? Guvhu out, guvhu out. guvhu out, chii ichocho? Mamwe makuvhu anotosemesa, ko kana rakaita sebhora kudai, guvhu out ,zvinei izvozvo he?

And also you see the boys, mabhurukwa ane zvigamba, ibhulugwa lami ligcwel' izigamba, vadhara vaya vanoimba chimbo chavo handiti, neNdebele, now vanoda mabhurukwa anoita look old iwo majeans aya. Kana riri nyowani rine ujean huyahuya a-a vanoda kumwe kwakachenuruka kana hameno sekunge rakambogezwa rikambotsikwa-tsikwa rikaitwa sei ndokuzotwasanurwa. Ndizvo zvavanoda, uku kwakati shinda dzacho owo dzichionekera. Zvino zvinorevei izvozvo, what society is that? What do you want to show? You see I don't understand it.

NN: Coming to the issue of municipalities, we have seen a number of these municipalities now being run by commissions. The question is are the municipalities best run by the most popular persons who are born out of the ballot or by competent administrators. In this regard was the Government right in changing the office of the executive mayor to a political office?

RGM: The local government system, it should depend on almost the same parameters, rest on the same parameters as those of central government. The central government comes from people who have been voted for, that is where the ballot has been exercised, and the people then can claim that they represent their constituency, constituencies even though they are now chosen, you know, to be the Government but they derive from the ballot.

The same should apply to local government and I believe that system should be sustained.

Of course, either way if you look at those produced by the ballot who are in Parliament and you look at those who are produced by the ballot who are in local government - you still find corrupt characters among them. It doesn't mean that people who are produced otherwise; they will not be corrupt. It's the character of the people that we must emphasise, either way you must have people of good character, people who are reputable being chosen and of course people with experience to run either Government or the local governmental institutions.

The making of the mayor political, yah sure, once a person represents or is a holder of a function that services the people, that someone is already political by virtue of his assumption of that power and will be criticised for failing to exercise that power. I think it's better that it be political. There is no way he can be apolitical. I don't see it, the voters are organised politically and they would produce a person who they believe will serve their interests, they will always be partisan in that. If they are Zanu-PF, they will vote for a candidate of Zanu-PF and if they are MDC - they will vote for a candidate of the MDC. I don't see a better way of doing it than that.

NN: In the past five years, we have seen a number of initiatives, all of them aimed at solving the so-called crisis in Zimbabwe and these initiatives are more than what we saw in the final phase of the liberation struggle, stretching from about 1976 - until the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979. We have seen the Commonwealth troika, the Adedeji Adebayor initiative, President Mbeki as the point man in South Africa, the Obasanjo initiative that claimed to have deployed former Mozambican President Cde Joachim Chissano and of late the UN through Ms Anna Tibaijuka and Jan Egeland. The question is, is there anything wrong with Zimbabwe to deserve so much attention?

RGM: Well, I think your comparison of the two situations, the pre-Independence and the post-Independence situation does not take into account that the pre-Independence situation, whatever endeavours were embarked upon, sought to resolve the issue of the people's power that was denied them by the settler regime. So it was the issue of colonialism then and how people can get into power. We had various endeavours and various initiatives taken, and all initiatives did not work because Ian Smith was resisting change. And so we had to oust him through the barrel of the gun and we organised the guerrilla struggle, which finally won the day. But after independence was attained and there was a constitution, democratic constitution that we worked out with the British at Lancaster House, albeit with areas that later, would need amendment and that's why you talked of the amendments earlier on, the Constitution needed amendments. That Constitution provided a basis on which, democratically the people of Zimbabwe could work towards establishing a government of their own choice, and this through the ballot.

This is what we have been doing, getting people, every five years, to vote for the party of their liking and getting that party into power. We have done this consistently, but then you have people who were with views of their own, who thought that the Lancaster House Constitution, because of some considered inadequacies, deserved to be amended, right, we might have agreed with them here and there; but you see, when you have one party say that party is in the opposition - it is opposed to the current executive system, of the president and vice presidents, two vice presidents, it would want a president, vice president and a prime minister. They want prime minister ship; you don't want prime minister ship. You can't say the fact of that political difference and political liking warrants a real intervention by others in mediating between you two, the two differences, no!

Those who stick to president and vice presidents have their own political beliefs and they go to the people every five years, to say we are coming to you with this system, with these other programmes vote for us. You go, If you are opposed to that system of governance and you would want to see prime minister ship included in it. You go to the people and say this is what we want, these are the changes we want to make to the constitution. And you canvass for them, that is what democracy wants you to do. If you win, fine, then you introduce the system. But you can't say ah this is a vital issue, let's strike about it, let us have demonstrations. You don't have to have demonstrations. After all, you have members in Parliament, increase the number of those members by going to the people and converting the people into liking your own policies. But if the people reject your policies, you have no right to go against the people through strikes and demonstrations. As for outsiders they should keep away. We have entertained them mainly because we didn't want to offend, some of them are our friends, but really they have nothing to intervene here about, nothing at all. There is a democratic environment, a democratic constitution, the politics of opposition are allowed to play as much as possible and there is freedom, therefore to pursue your political programme in a democratic way. As long as the way is democratic, we don't quarrel with it and that means going to the people with your own ideas, getting the people to like your ideas and to vote for you and that's what is required.

Those of our friends who have intervened what they should have done is to teach the MDC what democracy bids they should do as an opposition party. Go to the people, the people, the people and what is democracy - it is rule, government by the people, and government of the people, government for the people, it's people, people, people. That's the issue not intervention by outsiders.

But of course we know all this was being worked out and prodded and instigated by Blair, the British government and they have done a lot of mischief to Zimbabwe and we hope they will stop it.

NN: Towards the end of the liberation war, a BBC documentary entitled "the portrait of a terrorist" in which your late wife Sally and yourself participated dealt with how you were mischaracterised during the liberation struggle. Over 25 years of independence, your Excellency, has brought you more vilification and demonisation from the west. Is there anything wrong with the man Robert Mugabe?

RGM: I do not know judgment is that of others, the judgment is that of my people. My people say I am right in the things that I do and that is what I listen to. Those who say ah, I am wrong, I am a dictator, if you look at them, they are our erstwhile enemies, the colonial power Britain supported by the Americans, they never supported, never supported us from day one on our independence, never supported us during the liberation struggle - never at all.

They supported the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, supported the ANC in SA, because in SA there were Afrikaners and it was because they were not in power there that they stood side by side, but here we had Ian Smith their kith and kin and Harold Wilson in 1965 as we met him in October just a month before UDI. He said they were not prepared to attack Smith here even if he went the way of UDI, which he did a month later, and true enough they did not attack him, they did not send troops here.

He said, in State House as we met him from detentions in our various detention camps that the British government would not stand for a military operation against Ian Smith and this is it.

When we got our independence it's the same even before; the image of Robert Mugabe in the British Press was as ugly as it is today. So I don't look nice to them but I look nice and handsome to my people isn't it.

NN: When you look at it there have been lot of leadership changes in Sadc with many of the liberation era leaders now gone do you feel lonely or do you feel you are about to get lonely?

RGM: I don't feel lonely at all, there are lots of people who think as I do and whose ideas I also share and I don't feel lonely. Yes, we had some younger people coming to the fore but what one notices, is the lack of courage but we still need courage now and what one notices is a kind of surrender to European authority.

I suppose because of poverty and we withdraw or shrink in asserting our rights, instead of asserting our rights and instead of standing for that which is right, people shrink.

Blair will say, after our elections here, which will have been supervised by the African Union by Sadc, by Comesa, by Ecowas - all groupings in Africa. Supervised also by individual countries will have been invited by the Non-Aligned Movement by the ASEAN grouping and countries we will have invited from the Third World, Latin America, Asia and all these will have pronounced the elections as having been held freely and fairly and the result, therefore, been legitimate. No! says Blair, yes I agree with you, no! says Bush. We who are this far can see better what the Africans who are so close cannot see, they say. What's wrong with the Africans who cannot see things as clearly as we do, that the elections were not free and fair and none of them will stand up and say, go to hell our judgment is final, our eyes are as good as yours if not better.

They won't say that they will just keep quiet and this baffles us, baffles me. We need much more courage in the African Union than the courage that is being demonstrated at the moment in the assertion of our sovereign rights. We can't be slaves again, even intellectual slaves, no, they have had it, they have had that opportunity of subjecting us to their will, using us as objects and turning us into subhuman beings.

That chapter is gone and we must raise our voices and if necessary our fists and box, fight for what we are, that's what our elders did, that's what we did as we fought, that's what Mandela did when he was sent to Robben Island and that's the fight we want to see in our people.

Of course, they will say we want to make friends but you want to make friends on an equal basis and not on a basis where you go down on your knees and beg, no!

NN: You have strongly advocated for two permanent seats with veto powers for Africa in a reformed United Nations. Does Africa's proposition have any takers and do you see the five permanent members of the Security Council agreeing to give Africa two seats?

RGM: We must be takers, genuine takers, courageous takers they are our proposals and we must stand by them vigorously, canvass for them. Our view, Zimbabwe's view, which was shared by others, is that we haven't canvassed for them sufficiently.

True we can get support from the Third World and the Third World is larger than the first world - there are five permanent members of the Security Council who wield the veto, why can't we face them, see Bush and tell them we have the right as Africa to a seat, two seats, permanent seats in the Security Council.

We hear what he says, why he would he oppose it and we would call him a racist if he does oppose that, we would call him as an unfair person, as an unjust person, as a person who wants us to continue as inferior in the world order. Go to Blair, the same.

I know the Russians would support us, Chirac (French President) probably would also support us, the Chinese would support us, except that they will insist on our denying Japan a seat and they have their own historical fight with the Japanese and of course they would always veto any proposal which includes the Japanese. And I don't see us fail, we may fail the first step but that's not final, we must not accept any judgment that is negative on our proposal as being the end of everything, no!

We raise the matter again. After all this question is arising now because of the constant fight and constant prodding and debate we have had as the Non Aligned grouping at the UN. We are the ones who have provoked this issue and let us continue to uphold it and upholding it, not surrender at all on a matter of principle.

NN: Is the concept of democracy through the ballot merely a disguise for selfish national interests by the big powers?

RGM: The concept of democracy has nothing wrong with it, but the western world has never wanted the developing world, after all, to enjoy democracy. Let's not forget that historically, you see, they have been our oppressors, they colonised us, dehumanised us and in America they have killed, killed the Red Indians there, they have committed a lot of genocide in seizing their land and exploiting them.

They did the same to our blacks who they dragged on to the continent of America and treated like animals and this is their history, this is the nature of the westerners.

Similar treatment occurred also in other areas by the British, by the French, by the Portuguese, the Spanish, so they have that history they don't respect us at all and so the world order is an order which were only the great ones, the more highly developed ones would want to see their wishes, their own interests raised high and our own wishes, our on interests suppressed. That is the situation and I think that is the situation that calls for us to fight it and this is what I have been referring to as the injustice of the international order of today.

There is nothing which will accrue, nothing of benefit that will come our way if we expect that vana Bush vana Blair will one day, through some magic, begin to regard us as equals, they won't, they won't.

They will never do that never; ever will they do that. Now look at what has happened. Israel has been hammering the Palestinians without anyone making noise at all, the Hamas take up arms in defence of their right and in their own reckoning the country where they are and where the Israelis are, belongs to the Palestinians.

This is their argument, yes, and they are regarded as a greater evil than the Israelis are. Look at what happened to Yasser Arafat, Palestine in which he was held a prisoner, where he was denied the right of movement, where, even as he was ailing and was in his deathbed, he could not travel to any part outside Palestine for treatment, was it a Palestine of people who are regarded as equal, equal as human beings to, yes, to the Israelis across the river Jordan, to the Americans, to the Britons, the Britons or the French, no!

So they cannot have things of their own liking and when they go to elections and win; America, Britain and other European countries must judge those elections, not just in terms of the process as it will have gone but also in terms of who has emerged as a winner.

If the winner is not to their liking then the elections will not have been free and fair. Our elections were not to their liking and that's why they said they would not recognise us, but who are they at the end of the day to make that judgment over a sovereign country?

NN: Given all this dehumanisation and ill treatment of the Third World by the Americans and Europeans. Do you feel that there should be some form of compensation or how should they be asked to compensate us for the misdeeds?

RGM: There are lots of things to compensate us for. Some people just think of slavery as their having dehumanised us.

But you see slavery was not just on the continent of America or the Caribbean, slavery was also practised here, they took our people across to the Americas and here back home they colonised us and reduced us also to a form of slavery; in some cases, it was proper slavery in others they subjected us to a state of sub-humans.

They denied us the right of ownership of our country, of our resources, forced us to work for them, compulsory work and even as gangsters, they organised labour gangs to work on certain projects, you take the railway system to Beira, Mutare to Beira, it's our people who worked on it, they were forced to work on it.

So they were forced to work on other programmes, in other areas on farms and even as they were enticed to work on farms or in the mines through little payment, they still were denied real rights as workers, suffered you know, after working say for a period of 20 years and labouring for the master and getting old and now ailing they looked back and said to themselves ah! we suffered for this man but what do I leave my children or what do we leave our children, nothing.

When they grew old they were chased away from the farms or from the mining areas with nothing to hold on to, nothing to survive on, so it was slavery both ways and this is it. That's the nature of the people and if there is to be compensation let's look at all that.

Let's look also at what we have lost through colonisation, through the exploitation of our resources, thorough the sub-human treatment that we got, even as we tried to wage a campaign, beginning with political campaigns, absolutely democratic but agitating for equal treatment, no we were arrested, put in prison but at the end of the day no compensation for that.

And of course, as we waged the liberation struggle, our people were herded like sheep, like goats into closed villages you see, enclosed in there where life was very difficult, where even vanasikana, nanababa, vanakomana slept together in the same camps. So in retrospect, there is a lot of harm that was done to Africans and billions and billions of dollars or pounds really should be paid to us by way of compensation. Of course, there may be peculiar circumstances depending on the situations as they operated in the various places but our lawyers could work on all that and demand compensation.

It's an area we should look at, we talk of this compensation our brothers and sisters in America, regularly talk about the need for us to demand compensation but apparently we have taken the subject without any real serious attention paid to it, just brushed it aside.

NN: We have seen Zimbabwe adopt a Look East policy, the question is, does Look East mean not looking west and does Zimbabwe have any friends in the west?

RGM: Well, they tell me in geography that if you continue to look east you will suddenly find yourself looking west and vice versa, because of the rotation and the movement of the globe that's it. But politically what we mean is let us now recognise that our friends are in the Third World and most of the Third World is the east and there has been development in the east, in China, in Singapore, in Indonesia, in Malaysia and in Thailand and in India and so on.

Let's work with those because they understand you better, let's work with those because they are treated in the same way by the westerners, let's work with those because they have had a similar history as yours, they have been colonised before and they know the evil minds of the west. They are better friends any way; they are the ones who assisted us to be free and to have our freedom and independence.

So let us work with those who can assist us from the bottom of their heart and not those who still want to be our masters, if they give you something then they want to extract from you, a part of your heart, they are Shylocks.

Look at what they tried to do with us. The IMF is an international organisation to which the whole world belongs, but the British wanted to use the fact of our owing the IMF, the British and Americans, to bring about a change of the regime here.

Squeeze us economically, so politically we would do the things that they want us to do. No other country has been treated that way, you see, because they owe the IMF now, must turn into a political instrument that can bring about the transformation that our erstwhile enemies as they are supported by America would want to see happening in this country.

But we saw through their machinations, we also realised that they wanted to use our neighbours in that strategy we resisted it. And that's why we decided to find the money and we found it here in Zimbabwe, we didn't borrow it, we didn't go out to ask for it, we could have done that but we decided that we use our own money as earned by our own exporters and build up a fund so VaGono (Reserve Bank Governor) and I worked on that and we succeeded in raising the funds. We have now succeeded in clearing the debt that we owe to the IMF, directly to the IMF. There is still a debt that we owe to countries that have donated to another fund but that is not a debt owed per se to the IMF, no! We owe it to various countries but it's payable through the IMF. We will repay the debt in due course and that is because we want to get rid of this problem of the IMF. The IMF, as I have said before, you see, has never, ever worked in the interests of Zimbabwe here and we are not the only ones, other countries would also say the IMF has never succeeded in providing solutions to their economy but they can not say the IMF has transformed itself into a political instrument in order to bring about a change in their countries. It's only in regard to Zimbabwe that the IMF became this political monster you see that we saw rearing a head in order to consume us here.

NN: If the IMF has transformed itself into an organisation that has a clear political agenda against Zimbabwe, the question is with the timing also Zimbabwe appears to be complying with the demands of IMF, an institution that is anti-Zimbabwe?

RGM: No, no, we are not.

NN: We have paid back?

RGM: Yes that's their money. If you borrow money even from the devil you must know you are indebted to him and so it's his money, otherwise the devil will devour you and you will have no excuse. Unenge wadya marika yevaridzi - zvino chikara kana chokumedza woita sei?

NN: Your Excellency are you a late watcher of television, did you watch ACON matches?

RGM: I watched some of them and they were very interesting. Yah I watched the last one Cote d'Ivoire versus of course the host country, Egypt yah I did.

NN: What is your advice to the Zimbabwe Warriors, the Warriors coach Charles Mhlauri and lastly the Minister (of Education Sport and Culture) Chigwedere?

RGM: The Warriors individually are very good players they can be world class, they are world class. I didn't watch them play the match against Ghana but I was told it went well and the snippets of it that I later saw, but Zifa, Zifa continues to be a shambles.

I don't know whether we can't get right-minded people to constitute Zifa, it's the management.

The clubs, yes, they do get problems but they exist anyway but it is at that level of organisation and one hopes that the Sports Commission, with the help of the Ministry, can get things right once and for all or Government is going to involve itself in sport much more than we have done through the Sports Commission now.

In fact, we agreed to the vice president, being patron of he fund that sponsored the Warriors but even in regard to that fund, I was told by VaMsika that there were still problems about how some of the moneys were spent.

He was not alleging that there was corruption, but he was alleging that perhaps the moneys should never have been left to one person or two and that there should have been proper supervision given in regard to the moneys but the people love soccer, It's a people's game and let us ensure that it is well organised. I look forward to the Warriors doing better, they have honoured us and we have had occasions to praise them. When you look at the club matches whether it's Spanish teams, Italian teams, German or British, Brazilian, it's high class at club level.

You look at Liverpool versus Arsenal or Chelsea or something, you think it's world class but then you are surprised a country like Britain cannot win with all that talent that it has, but of course the phenomenon that strikes one is that there is hardly a club, a top class club in Britain that has no Africans in it, in France that has no Africans in it. I don't know whether that deprives us of our talent or enhances it. I would want to believe that, yes, we may feel deprived but certainly we are getting more and more training and these people, after all, play for their national sides back home and so they are not quite lost to us but it's charming to see blacks play.

Sometimes inika ndinenge ndichitarisa kuti vangu vari kupi muteam imomo ndovandinosapota ivavo but you find uku kune vatema uku kune vatema so you are split.

NN: Your Excellency your birthday comes seven days after Valentines' Day. What did you get for the First Lady?

RGM: Ah I thought you were going to ask what the First Lady will get for me. What did I get? I never met this man called Valentine but they tell me it's roses that play the game and so I got flowers, she also brought me flowers, but our little boy Belarmine to this day is still crying kuti ko ini angu maruva ari kupi? You try to tell him kuti no ndezvevakuru izvi hausati wakura he doesn't understand it, he still wants his own flowers delivered.

Anyway, it was flower for flower.

NN: And your birthday wish your Excellency?

RGM: My birthday wish, naturally, I wish myself longer life, it's only 82 and to live another 82 after that, won't you want to wish me that? You think I will be somewhere else there after?

Well to thank, actually, to thank the people for creating an environment in which I have been able to live that long. Thank God for it, I happen to be one of long survivors, not just family wise, we have lost two brothers, elder to me, but even in the country people are dying quite early, quite early and one wishes that our longevity is not just for one man but for our younger people as well.

And this is our worry, we are losing lives especially because of HIV and Aids but there are other diseases as well cropping in, heart failure and strokes and all taking people muma 50s right up, 50, 40 something, warohwa nestroke. I don't know what we should do to avert these diseases. HIV, of course, we know what we should do but the others are a matter for constant attention.

Most people don't get examined, I have examinations - medical check ups about twice a year, you get checked fully.

The other day I went for a heart check kwaaMatenga zvikanzi ah ah President vava kutorwara. You go for heart checks, you go for, you know the whole body, to be checked, your bone system and so on, the whole system. The other day I got checked in Singapore and they said my bones were not exactly of a boy of 26 but said certainly you have those of someone of 30. I was surprised they said they are as strong as that, of a 30-year-old but you say 26, which is quite close.

You get checked, don't fear that the doctors might find you with this or that ailment, but if they do you may get treatment then. It may enable you to get treatment but vanhu havade kuenda, vamwe vanotya why?

I think that's one of the pieces of advice that should accompany even our HIV campaign and you see just refrain, refrain, but people must get examined also because compulsory examination is contrary to human rights they say.

I think it's necessary as long as you don't divulge. I think we must examine our people but tell the particular individual this is what we discovered in you.

In Cuba they have a doctor to a given number of families, say 10 families, a doctor to be examining the families and Cuba is churning out doctors like anything. We have about 3 000 apart from 20 000 medical people sent to Venezuela alone.

Every one of our countries has Cuban doctors, South Africa has 400, we here an average of 200 but they are slightly less than 200 and of course they do a two-year stint and go back and we get another batch.

I think they are well advanced, more advanced than modern, the developed countries in that regard, but their economy is not that good yet they are able, in order to serve their people and serve us also, they are able to train so many doctors a year - thousands and for Latin America, as indeed, and of course that is how they appeal to other countries to have sympathy with them as well.

NN: We would like to thank you very much for spending your time with us, your Excellency, on your 82nd birthday and would like to wish you many more.

RGM: Thanks, thank you a lot.