Full text of Mugabe 88th birthday interview

TM: Your Excellency, one issue that has been talked about for quite sometime is the issue of the Constitution. It has taken longer than we all thought but are you really happy with the progress?

President Mugabe: Not really. It’s a process that is puzzling us now. When we begun we thought it was a matter of 18 months and we have an election. But as things look now, one doesn’t know what’s happening and one doesn’t know which way people would want us to go.

There is the dragging of feet, so much delay in the process. I don’t know what the real problem is but as others describe the problem, they think those who are charged with the task of putting ideas together, examining what the people said during the outreach programme are dragging their feet deliberately.

They want longer time, longer time because it means more money. They are given allowances. They are being paid and if the process comes to an end, so does naturally, the payment. It comes to an end.

I don’t know it, that is, the reason, whether it’s because the people who are at the top of it want a longer period to earn money or there are some problems.

But, I would want to believe that one problem is that some people or shall I say, one or two parties to the constitution-making process might now have discovered that this way of the constitution making is not in their favour and that the views that were obtained during the outreach programme are not in their favour.

They are not supportive of their parties and so they are dragging and dragging and dragging on, either to confound the process or to get the other side to tire and give up the exercise and the exercise doesn’t happen at all.

So one wonders why we abandoned, in the first place, the process that we had agreed on that this was going to be based on the Kariba Draft, which was all ready, all agreed and enunciating, you know, the process, which could have been completed in a short period. But we listened to our counterparties that it was better to listen to the people first.

TM: Your counterparts in the Global Political Agreement are actually accusing Zanu-PF. They say Zanu-PF is causing the delays because it’s afraid of elections.

President Mugabe: No! We want elections, we wanted them yesterday, we want them today, we want them any day, but others are saying no, no, no, we can’t have elections.

First, they were saying 2012, now they are saying in 2013. But perhaps when we get much further without elections they will say no elections at all; let us remain in power without elections.

And we will, on our side as a party, we have made a decision, last year at our conference that this year we definitely have an election exercise.

Nobody is forced to go to an election but definitely I will exercise my presidential powers in accordance with the main principal law, the Constitution of our country and announce when the election will take place. And I will do this.

TM: But looking at the process that we have been going through with the help of our brothers from the Sadc region. If, for example, we have elections and the other parties boycott, what will likely be the result? How would Sadc react?

President Mugabe: Well, we will tell Sadc what the problem is and Sadc can’t compel us to continue an exercise which is futile and I am sure there is greater wisdom on the part of Sadc. And anyway, the GPA states that a party can resign, completely reject it and once a rejection takes place, we revert back to our Constitution, which all these years we have based ourselves and it becomes the basis of our election.

President Mugabe: No, no, no! All I am saying is that Zanu-PF will withdraw from the GPA if others continue with these dirty tricks. We can’t have them anymore. We can’t put up with them anymore.

Anyway, what I should say is, last week, the principals — that is the other two and myself — Tsvangirai, Mutambara and myself decided that we be provided with the draft constitution, that the management should present that to us.

We got the draft (but) we haven’t looked at it yet and we would want to see what the draft says but I am told the draft is not yet reviewed by the management committee and so it’s a draft which we can’t base any definite views of our own.

The other part which should look at the draft hasn’t done so and hasn’t presented it to us as a reviewed draft. But it’s just a raw draft directly from the drafters. All we can do is just look at and perhaps see what the drafters have put together and give time to our management committee to look at it and present a reviewed version of it.

Now we had decided that once we have looked at the draft having been looked at, first, by the management committee, we will then decide on the road map. We the principals and I think none of us is for any undue postponement of elections. No!

President Mugabe: They should expect a referendum, a referendum to get the people’s views, whether the people accept the draft constitution or not.

If they reject it then we revert to the old constitution, if they accept then the usual process takes place. Parliament must also endorse it and then it becomes a legal document after it has been passed by Parliament and we can go for an election. If it’s rejected then of course, announce the process that should take place.

TM: Your Excellency, talking of the draft constitution, there have been reports that there is a certain clause that has been put there in order to bar you from contesting as a presidential candidate by limiting terms of office.

We haven’t come to a position where political tricks or legal tricks, for that matter are put in place to bar anyone, who normally has the right to participate in an election.

TM: Still on elections, is Zanu PF ready for elections? I am saying this in light of the factionalism we hear about. Are you prepared as a party?

President Mugabe: Well I don’t know anything about factionalism. You always get differences in a party. I suppose this makes the process. It’s always the fact of differences, we have contradictions. We must resolve these contradictions, move forward and you move forward, you will also encounter new contradictions, new differences and also have solutions and that’s how progress is made, isn’t it?

It always comes after such contradictions provided solutions do occur in regard to them. Yes, yes, yes the party is always ready, ever ready. This means we are always ready to fight.

TM: Your Excellency, what calibre of a leader would you want to succeed you and at the moment can you say you have found that successor?

President Mugabe: NO! The party will find a successor. It’s the people who can find a successor. I came from the people and the people in their wisdom, our members of the party, will certainly select someone once I say I am now retiring, but not yet.

President Mugabe: What do we offer the electorate? Goodness me! Independence gave us political freedom and we say that political freedom can not be complete unless we have sovereignty over our natural resources and we started by exercising the right, sovereign right, in acquiring our land and apportioning it to our people and so the first step was for us to feel that we are not just politically sovereign.

That we are also economically sovereign and the first step as I said was that of acquiring the ownership of our land and getting it from the British settlers and put it into the hands of Zimbabweans. That sovereignty over the land resources! But that’s not all. The land question is just one area. There are other areas which are economic. We must exercise our sovereignty also in regard to, you know, the economic sector.

But you have also mining, manufacturing sector. You have the infrastructure and that sovereignty has not yet based itself. Therefore, now with our law on indigenisation and empowerment, we will want to ensure that our people also have the ownership of the resources that lie underneath.

That way the mining sector is meaningful. It was not meaningful all along because there is a process where it is owned by outsiders but we want the resources to remain in our hands even though we are ready, we are prepared that those who will be partners with us should have a share of our resources, not ownership, but of the benefit that comes from our resources.

And that is why the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act was passed and this requires that whatever companies undertake mining in the country or any manufacturing exercise or any other socio-economic activity; if these companies are foreign, they must cede at least 51 percent.

This should belong to the people of Zimbabwe either to the Government and Government acting on behalf of the people and that’s part of indigenisation also and so this is an exercise we are working on now.

The land has come, now the minerals must also come and manufactured products must also belong to us and of course we have the infrastructure, we have the telecommunication and other communication activities.

The programmes that are due to take place, we want our people and all those to participate as owners and shareholders but particularly owners in that regard on their own.

Yes we will continue to produce people with skills in that they work, become workers, they become labourers in some cases but they must be owners of their own resources, owners of these enterprises. Be entrepreneurial, in attitude, in their disposition, generally not expect that outsiders will come into the country and develop the country for us and do it at our own expense.

When we get the benefit of being workers and nothing more than workers and then at the end of the day what comes to us is that which the State gets by way of taxation. That must stop now!

TM: Just out of curiosity, Your Excellency, draft constitution ikauya kwamuri mukaona ma issues amusingafarire, do you have the authority ekubvisa?

President Mugabe: Tinoramba. Ehe, tinobvisa. Ko togoregererei? Nhai, nhai, nhai! It’s a draft constitution and we will say this we do not want. If for example, you have in the constitution kuti ngavatemwe makumbo, vanenge vaba, ngavatemwe makumbo. Aiwa zve tinoramba. Kana homosexualism zvese tinobvisa.

President Mugabe: I am happy with the fact that it has managed to at least get us together with the other parties so they can participate in Government and have a feel of what Government is and also be exposed to the public. Now that the public knows what Zanu-PF stands for, MDC-T, M, N or whatever they call themselves; what these stand for.

I am sure no one can deceive the public anymore by hiding their own views and ideas because they have not yet entered the arena but they are now in the arena and the people can see who speaks sense and who speaks nonsense and who is better behaved. And who is guilty of misbehaviour and so on and so forth.

So we are there for the people. It has also enabled us, and it is one good thing it has done; the GPA enabled us to work together, know each other. We are parties and perhaps cease regarding ourselves as enemies but regard each other as opponents.

Differences in approach to definite issues and therefore people who can tolerate each other and at the end of the day we are Zimbabweans. All of us so that is very important and it’s important to our people that we may differ politically, religiously even ethnically. Differ in various other ways but we are all Zimbabweans and that is what counts much more than anything else.

It counts much more than your ethnicity, it counts much more than your political affinity and much more than any other — ism that you may have that you are a Zimbabwean national, Zimbabwean citizen, mwana wevhu; singing one national anthem and waving one flag. That is what must always guide us; that these differences are really artificial.

But one thing that we can never deny an individual, no matter what dress he is wearing, no matter what religion he belongs to, what tribe he belongs to, is the nationality.

The fact that he is a Zimbabwean. That is the son or daughter of the soil. So that is very important and that is also the source of the other principles that derive there; the fact that we are one.

Must we hate each other because we belong to different religions and bodies or because we are of different tribes or different parties? No!

But yes, we may oppose each other and oppose each other quite firmly. But must we unleash violence to each other? That must stop of course. No violence.

That is what the GPA has taught all of us and we are also very happy that our national healing exercise, as there is an organ which is led by Vice President John Nkomo, and each championing this, you know, campaign of getting people to understand each other, appreciate each, one another, sons and daughters of Zimbabwe.

But having said that, there are great differences between us and the other parties — Zanu-PF and the others. We believe ourselves in the people of Zimbabwe as a sovereign people. We believe that they are endowed by the Almighty with the right to sovereignty over their land. That no one from outside has the right, you know, to acquire a piece of land or any national resource without their permission.

In other words, the outsiders must be entertained by us, accommodated by us, must be permitted by us to live here and to make homes here, to enjoy themselves, to marry our beautiful girls and also to eat our beef; to kill our deer, antelope, go to Kariba and fish, catch our fish; in other words, to do things that we can do. Yes!

We accommodate people from outside, just as our people can be accommodated in other countries as well. But no, they should never, never, never attempt to impose their power over us. I am talking now of countries like Britain, of nationals like Britons who once upon a time said the sun never sets in the British Empire. Priding themselves on never, never, never being slaves; as they sang Britain, Britain, Britain will never be slaves.

They never sang Britain will never, never be slave masters. You see they will never be slaves but how about being slave masters? So there is the difference between us. They should never try to impose their culture on us and hence our abhorrence or feeling of abhorrence. The feeling that if we are to get aid from Britain we must first accept that man can marry man and woman can marry woman.

The GPA emphasises that, but we differ with the other parties. Zanu-PF is of the strong view that we are sovereign but we still have these other parties still going to the Europeans, you know, Europeans, when we have problems, Europeans.

TM: Yes, Your Excellency and we also read of alleged clashes between yourself and the Prime Minister. How do you describe your working relationship with the Prime Minister?

President Mugabe: I read of the clashes in the papers. In the Standard and what are the others? The little papers! (TM: Daily News?) Dustbin things, Yah!

But because they must create these fights it’s Tsvangirai going for Mugabe. So and so and I am always at the receiving end, you see. Even when people come to my State House where I am the resident, they have come to fight me. No, no, no!

It has always been very peaceful. We were very suspicious of each other at the beginning but as time went on, we got to know each other.

TM: Your Excellency, from what you have said this might become a tricky situation where it has been alleged that the Prime Minister was involved in some fraudulent activity which involves the purchase of the Prime Minister’s residence and it is said the police have done their work and are waiting for the go ahead to arrest him. Is he going to be arrested?

President Mugabe: I am not a policeman. The President is not a policeman. When crimes are committed, the police do not come to the President to ask permission to arrest an individual.

I have read also in the papers that there has been some fraudulent behaviour but it if this is so, well, it’s the Prime Minister who should answer and if he does not get to you, you don’t have to get him to answer via the President.

What we don’t want is people getting arrested on the basis of evidence which is not clear and on the basis of facts which have not been thoroughly investigated.

The police must investigate these cases thoroughly so that by the time they get to the stage of building a case and taking it to the court they are quite sure that they have a case against the particular individual to whom it relates. But just rushing to build a case against somebody doesn’t do us good at all.

If anything, it harms our reputation and I hope they have investigated the matter thoroughly not just rush to make up things against the Prime Minister.

TM: Your Excellency, from there we take you to the state of the economy. You spoke about mining, you spoke about indigenisation, are you happy with the contribution that mining has done to the economy in totality?

President Mugabe: There is mining taking place. Just now our eyes are fixed on diamond mining. Not much has come from that mining yet because the sales are not many and there are hindrances being put along the way.

Put in the way of selling and marketing diamonds by the United States. They go to our main markets, to main buyers of diamonds and threaten them. (The go) to ask them not to buy Zimbabwean diamonds. It is alleged that these are blood diamonds but I haven’t seen any blood flowing on the diamonds. I have visited Chiadzwa, I have done so twice, but they are very clean.

We know that the US, Britain and other Western countries do not want to see us succeed. They want their sanctions to pull us down and ruin us economically but we refuse to be ruined.

We are a resilient nation and we know what our rights are and we will not be subjugated by anyone. But they try their best and this is the reason why not much has come from the diamond sector. But with more companies being licenced, we hope that the State will get a greater benefit. I can assure you I have my eyes there.

We know of the talk about diamonds being smuggled, but no really, there is strict security; but it’s a case of selling the diamonds. The mining is taking place but the marketing is what is so limited when it takes place.

But other areas of the mining sector are also important. We have platinum, but there is very little contribution being made by platinum to our development.

If anything really, our platinum is developing other countries much more than it is developing Zimbabwe. Then there is gold, gold is the main, I would want to believe, the main mineral and you get it practically in every province in the country.

And you have small miners, makorokoza, vanamai nanababa, along the rivers, digging everywhere. We have nothing against them but we want them to be better organized, taught how to do their gold mining.

But they are making a contribution, where they are doing it properly; to the development of the country but these are areas that should be better organized. However, because of sanctions there has been a sagging of the sector and it needs to be revamped, needs quite some capital to go into it. You know, machinery wears out and there is need for some spare parts or new machinery. We need to see much more production.

Gold is fetching higher prices. US$1 755 per ounce, that’s the international price at the moment and it is lots of money and we need now to improve and get the process which will see our gold mining recover very much. So we want to get to about 30 tonnes that we used to produce in the past. About that and even exceed that.

Platinum also must be managed. I hope the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act will now enable us to get greater benefit from all this mining exercise which has been taking place in the past by doing so at our expense, national expense that is.

Now that we must go into all these companies with at least 51 percent, that is least, it can be more than that. Fifty-one percent shareholding in a company! The reward to Zimbabwe must be greater but what is required is revamping, improving the performance and greater productivity taking place in the mining sector.

Manufacturing also requires the same exercise; injecting more capital and I think companies, as you see, had actually gone down miserably to about 10 percent. And now we want to see this production capacity rise but we must inject more capital, more capital into them and this has been the problem.

President Mugabe: We thought we had SDRs. The IMF gave us but they were used otherwise. Yes, we create capital. We can borrow from international institutions but the World Bank and IMF must obey the dictates of the West and impose sanctions on us. Even if they don’t say so but in practice that is what happens and we can’t rely on those ones.

But we have the Afrrexim bank which has been there and the regional banks and reliance on the eastern bloc, China, India and their financial institutions.

They are prepared to give us loans. They are also prepared to bring their companies here and partner us and that way get us rejuvenated and increase the production of our companies.

TM: Your Excellency, you mention the issue of sanctions, how are you going to handle that within the GPA as your partners are constantly failing to sing from the same hymn book?

President Mugabe: That is what baffles us. Surely, if you are a Zimbabwean and Zimbabwe is being attacked by outsiders and it doesn’t matter what differences between the MDC and ourselves, when outsiders attack us, we must unite against the outsiders and try to drive the outsiders out of Zimbabwe, get his hand off us.

His intervention bids us to be together but, no, the MDC decides to side with the Americans, with the Europeans in supporting sanctions against its own people. We do not understand that. They fail to, they find it very difficult, to say sanctions are hurting us.

They try to avoid using the word sanctions; they want to call them restrictions. I do not understand, perhaps, it’s the lack of political consciousness, national consciousness, which characterize them. You see, they have not gone through the grill like us. But one doesn’t have to have been a member of the ANC, National Democratic Party, Zapu, Zanu in order to have national consciousness.

Just a feeling that Zimbabwe is your country and you will countenance, you will not accept any attack from outside, whether this attack is physical or it’s economic by way of sanctions.

But if you are for the people, how can you then at the same time turn against the people by supporting sanctions, which hurt them.

President Mugabe: Vanoti tiritose asi kuti vaenda kunze uku vanoudza varungu vavo kuti ah, chimboregai ma sanctions aripo, vanhu vaye, vanaMugabe havasati vavakuda regime change, havasati vanzwa. Hatife takanzwa!

Imperialism is imperialism. An imperialist is just an imperialist. I often repeat the words of Nkurumah: Only a dead imperialist is a good one.

TM: One of the issues to do with the economy inyaya yemari. We have serious cash shortages. Are we likely to see the return of the Zimbabwean dollar? What solutions do you have as a Government to deal with the shortages seeing that the money we are using doesn’t come from Zimbabwe?

President Mugabe: I agree, the US dollars did help a bit but the dollars are not minted by us, we don’t manufacture them, we don’t print them. They are American. You can’t expect to develop an economy using foreign currency, American foreign currency. You got to have your own foreign currency.

Yes, sure, we had that inflation that rendered our Zim dollar worthless but these things happen to economies when they have the burden of sanctions, the burden of bearing lots of debts and so on and so forth.

We cannot improve the situation in the GPA very much. That’s why we would want to have an election and we know as Zanu-PF government we would certainly bring about a far, far much better situation to the economy in respect of getting capital injection into it.

We are persons who look east and at the moment if you look west, Europe and America are looking east, what you encounter are eyes that are looking east and your eye is looking west.

Even if we were in good books with Europe, Europe will never ever help you to the extent of your being able to transform your economy from being, you know, a primary producer to being a producer of secondary products.

In other words, that adding of value to our raw products, qualitative improvement, which Europe did when they started industrializing as much as possible, moving dependence on agriculture to dependence of manufactured food.

That is yet to occur in Africa, in South Africa it is okay, here it had started okay a bit but we are now handicapped and that is what we must do, ensure that we raise the level of our economy. Take it from primary to secondary and that’s get it to the manufacturing stage where now you beneficiate your products.

And you produce products of greater value. Then, of course, you can have your own currency that is backed by an economy which is viable. We have gold, we have diamonds, we have platinum, valuable minerals and very precious minerals and these can back our economy.

But I believe that if we can go back to the use of gold as the basis of our currency, that will ensure that our currency will become viable and will not be doubted internationally at all.

And it cannot be assailed by the American dollar, which is just a paper and America has been printing and printing. Because then you can only print money if it’s based on the value of gold that you have. This is based on purely the effectiveness of your economy. How much level of volume of production of your GDP, Gross Domestic Product and then you print money according to the level of development in that regard.

So I believe personally that we have a very great future and thank God we still have lots of wealth underground. Thank God the British settlers did not scoop all and in some cases didn’t discover some of the minerals like platinum. But perhaps, diamonds for one reason they were discovered but they did not want to reveal to the world. De beers I understand were carrying; they said they were carrying out tests, year in, year out, getting lots of soil to South Africa.

Filling lorries from Chiadzwa there and when you ask they say we are still doing tests then we discovered later that, no, there were diamonds, ah, then they stopped; the tests didn’t continue.

And then we had that company called the ACR, born out of De Beers. They tried to put Africans, you know, into it. We resisted it, remember. We said no, and it was then that we took some action and said only the State can operate in that area.

We were fencing it because we wanted time to arrange and gear ourselves and prepare ourselves for proper mining in the area. Well, I have great hope that, in the GPA, they will be real, real development in gallops rather than in slow strides as at present.

Well, we have done something with the GPA but very little. The companies are still down. Manufacturing factories, main factories in Bulawayo, down, down, down! And the mining ones too, even gold, some closed and we are having to open some of them now, you see, but we will do so with our friends.

They are not the Chinese only, there are lots of other friends in the East there who are prepared to partner us properly and not on a horse and rider partnership which was what (Roy) Wellensky and (Godfrey) Huggins during the Federation talked about that the partnership with an African was a horse and rider partnership.

And we asked who was the rider and who was the horse and they didn’t provide the answers. Then they talked about the two-pyramid system, that’s Huggins now, who became Lord Malvern later. Two pyramids, the European pyramid is up there, the African pyramid is down here. But when will it ever rise and grow in order to get their height.

But look at the strides we have made since independence, education and socially. Look at our people, we have almost eradicated illiteracy and almost everybody can read and write and this is it. And not the skills, we have now been able to export skills, you see, South Africa, most of our young people.

Even in Australia, Britain, they are proud to have young Zimbabweans with skills to operate in their factories or in their banks etc. That’s Zimbabwe.

But we put ourselves much more together; get our people in the Diaspora to come and join us and we sail together. Our young people must feel that they have a stake in their country and that’s very important because the future is more theirs than ours.

They are the ones we want to equip, they are the ones we feel must have the necessary skills, intellectually and physically, that will enable them now, to run the country and undertake the various operations that are necessary in order to bring about greater development and transformation of the socio-economic system.

TM: Thank you Your Excellency, let me take you to issues facing Africa as a continent. Recently you came back from the AU summit and you came back a disappointed man. Do you feel betrayed by your African brothers when it comes to decision-making; decisions that affect Africa?

President Mugabe: I think the crop of leaders we have now is quite different, quite different from the older crop, from their elders. Those of them who came together to form the Organisation of African Unity and vowed that Africa would be freed from imperialism and colonialism and you had them like Nkrumah, you know, pledging that Ghana would not regard itself as free if any part of Africa was still under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism.

You see, they formed the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 and formed also the liberation committee and taught us how to fight for our countries, organised us and showed us how unity could enable us to fight and fight successfully in redeeming our countries and liberating them.

President Mugabe: Life is what you make it, they say. But it’s not always what you make it. You have a part of it which is inherited. The physical entity which we are we inherit from our parents so the genetic system is inherited from what your parents gave you.

But there are things that you must do for yourself. Don’t drink. Ahhm or if you want to drink don’t drink too much but I would say don’t drink at all. Yeah, don’t smoke at all. When you smoke the nicotine goes to your lungs; it’s a sure case that your lungs are inhaling… Look after yourself…girlfriends…when you are young you want two or three girlfriends, but you finally make a choice…little houses, some little houses are dangerous these days.

And then nechirwere chedu ichi. I have seen youngsters in the extended families just going one after another. Kune vakasiiwa…We are having to look after them. Havasisina vanoriritira. And i have said to myself if this is what has happened around me, what about the extended family of Tazzen, my neighbour there?

This is what has happened to our nation, young people going in their 30s, 40s – so that is the part that we take care of. The other part we inherit from our parents.

President Mugabe: Every morning. I have my one hour and ensure I exercise. That’s the way we grow but some live longer than others. My brother Raphael I never saw him. He was born before me, 1922 and when he was six months, mother said he suffered from dysentery. But Michael, who was born before him … takatamba tese naMichael. He was very bright, a footballer – everything, an athlete.

I wasn’t bright, I was much more conservative, much more inward thinking, but bookish… my mother at one time was worried kuti mwana wangu anogona kunyengawo asikana imi?

Mike was clever; he was also bright, perhaps much brighter than myself. Ah he was really bright, but poorly (in) 1934 he drank poison achibva afa aine 10 years. It was a sad sad death my father couldn’t take it vakati ah mwana wangu apuwa poison kwasekuru vachibva varamwa kuenda kuBulawayo from 1934 only to come back 1944 atova nemumwe mudzimai, 1945 achibva afa muna June, ini ndatova teacher zvangu.

Ndini ndakazodzidzisawo vakanditevedzera, so i was lucky that way. ndikazogona kunyenga ndikati amai ndauya nomuroora ndabva naye kuGhana.

So God looks after us but there is a portion we must play. You must eat well, you take some vegetables, don’t over-eat beef, it’s dangerous, eventually unoita gout. Taida kudya nyama zvakakomba tiri mafreedom fighters. Vose vatakadya navo vaida nyama ah, as for Joshua Nkomo ndiye aive mukuru weduzve, aida nyama maningi, Ndebele style. Kana tikapihwa chicken aitora yose, but then akazoita gout, then the doctor said no…Ah. VaMuzenda gout; VaMusika gout…

TM: Well thank you so much Your Excellency for giving us your time to talk to us about your family, the state of the economy and the country at large. We wish you many more.

President Mugabe: Thank you thank you, you are doing a good work, continue doing that good work. Most of you are on the younger side so we hope that you continue to be revolutionary, if you are, if you are not then read, read mabhuku avana Nkrumah, read a lot, even go out to read.