'Be grateful,' Mugabe tells Sadc

President Robert Mugabe on Sunday took over as chairperson of regional political-socio-economic grouping Sadc and immediately laid down the law, asserting his authority with a call for member-states to be grateful of sacrifices made by the continent's forefathers.

In his acceptance speech as incoming chairperson at the Sadc 34th Summit being held in Victoria Falls, Mugabe called for a re-aligning of the region's priorities and a lesser reliance on foreign benevolence.

"We have done very little to honour our forefathers; although just recently something was done for Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana's founding leader) and the re-naming of one of the halls after Mandela (Nelson former South African President) at the Africa Union headquaters  in Ethopia.

"Tanzania bore the brunt of the liberation struggles of the whole of Africa and nothing has been done, no mention nothing of Nyerere (Julius Tanzania's founding president), no symbol to honour him. We cannot be that ungrateful and something must be done and we will make sure of that at the AU," said Mugabe.

"Maybe it is because we are a new generation of leaders," he said observing that the majority of his contemporaries were no longer with him at the top table of regional politics and he had been joined by a younger generation whose appreciation of the values of the struggles against colonialism fought between the 60s into the 70s in particular as well as the ideals thereof was not as high as his.

On the development front Mugabe warned against over-reliance on donor funding and called for streamlining of Sadc programmes.

"The region must focus on interventions that have the greatest impact on our citizens and we should not be tempted into introducing too many programmes that we would not be able to fund. Our continued over-reliance on the generosity and goodwill of our cooperating partners tends to compromise our ownership and sustainability of Sadc programmes. How can we claim Sadc to be our own organisation when close to 60% of the programmes are externally funded," queried Mugabe.

He said the review of the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) currently underway should be a reality check on Sadc leaders.

"The review of the RISDP should therefore result in a Sadc with fewer and focused programmes that are core to our vision of regional integration, which is aimed at strengthening our economies and the improvement of the lives of the people of our region," said Mugabe.

"The region seems to have slowed down on market integration and instead our focus is now more on the on-going consolidation of the Sadc Free Trade Area. We however remain concerned about the persistently skewed trade imbalance amongst member states, which further justifies the pursuance of robust industrialisation policies across the region if we are to create jobs and curb labour migration".

"I am aware of elections coming in Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique and we the people of Africa, the people of Sadc and our true friends must supervise those elections because what we want are decisions that are genuine, decisions that will honestly recognise the truth as we saw in Zimbabwe and not those who will say the truth can become untruths. Those are the people we do not want, what do they want anyway. We do not want them," said Mugabe.

Mugabe last year romped to another electoral victory after vanquishing his opponent, former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai who he characterised as a front for the West's regime change