We must unite and try to drive outsiders out of Zimbabwe - Mugabe

This is the last part of President Mugabe's interview with ZBC aired on Monday night.

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. (They 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 organised, 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 organised.

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 but 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.

TM: Do you have this capital?
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.

We can borrow from them and use our resources as security and get loans.

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 characterise 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.

That's what a real party that stands for the people, that operates in the interest of the people, should do.

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.

TM: Pamunosangana hamumbobvunza here kuti zvii zvinorema?
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 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.

In other words, they have nothing to offer at all and it's futile to hope that the West can redeem us.

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 industrialising as much as possible, moving dependence on agriculture to dependence on 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.

Then they were bidding that Africa must unite and Nkrumah wrote a book to that effect.

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.

They got us arms, they managed to send us to countries where we got trained, where we had ideological inspiration and we were inspired by the teachings of the likes of Marx and Lenin, of course and throughout the Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia.

It was Ceausescu in Romania or Zhivkov in Bulgaria, it was the same, same song, down with imperialism, down with colonialism.

With China Mao Tse Tung and Mo Tse Tung's theory, you see, we were inspired by all these.

Castro, later on, Algeria and Ben Bella at the OAU cast away his written speech and said time had come for Africa to sacrifice for the liberation of Southern Africa.

He said let's be prepared to die a little, die a little in order to liberate Southern Africa.

That's Ben Bella. He had led Algerians in fighting against French colonialism, de Gaulle.

De Gaulle had said to former French colonies, yes, all of you can become free.

Say yes, to independence with French association, oh no, most of them said yes except Toure in Guinea and Mali, Keita, these ones said no.

So Nkrumah talked to these two. They had a unity of Ghana-Guinea-Mali, I was there then and the children were taught to sing Ghana-Guinea-Mali, Ghana-Guinea-Mali that was before the OAU.

But of course, when the OAU came, that was abandoned but look the OAU had these people who are revolutionaries.

Now the OAU just looks in silence and members don't raise a finger as Nato flies its planes over Libya, throws bombs everywhere, harasses the Libyans in every way possible and chases the followers of Gaddafi, hunts for Gaddafi, his family. Nothing at all.

If anything, those of our leaders, those who are supposed to represent the African Union in the Security Council voting with Europe against their own countries. Not only have we become cowards, but we have become sellouts also of our own people.

Betraying, betraying the nations of Africa. That's that AU thing. They just think of money, money, money. Material things.

If I speak against Britain and Britain is paying part of my budget, it is providing money I need for my hospitals, where shall I get this money?

If I talk against France and I need French money to pay soldiers, to pay my civil servants, ah, where shall I get the money? That's the consideration.

You go and kneel before Sarkozy, you go and kneel before David Cameron, kneel before Obama and say yes, we shall do all you want us to do.

And these are leaders and when you are kneeling, you are making your nation kneel before these young imperialists.

This is the worst period we have ever been and we need a recovery from this, we need another revolution that will revolutionise the leaders themselves.

TM: How would that come about Your Excellency?
President Mugabe: It will come about because as they say, go to France or any other European country for help, that help is never given to them. It comes through NGOs and NGOs they give you money, yes, for your old people here, your starving village here, there is no money that can come from Europe to enable you to build factories, never ever!

Even as they invited us to be associated with them, with the EEC, now the European Union, no, they would not want to encourage the development of factories.

They will buy bananas, yes, buy our beef, yes, it's all primary, primary, buy our cotton shirts, no!

That will encourage you to produce, to manufacture and no loans to enable you to make big investments.

So go to West Africa where they got their independence in the 1960s, long before we dreamt of any independence here and see the state which is there. Nothing has improved very much.

You get a little road that has been done there, from the airport yes, just to deceive people into believing that there has been some developments in Accra and so on.

But the people are still as primitive as ever, there is still illiteracy there and this is what is going to spark, now, a revolution.

Youngsters who get educated and see that oh no, the parents are still living the primitive lives of the past, will not stand for it.

Those with brains, with real knowledge of what happened in the past and they will always be, of course, a few of these and they will learn the lessons.

I hope in Southern Africa, I hope, we do not fall into the same, you know, stupid position as some of our leaders in the West have done.

Of subjecting to dictation or dictatorship from the West and that is anathema and that is what is going to irritate our young people.

That we are still being dictated to, that we must go to Paris, we must go to London, to do what?

I have a home in Geneva, I have a home in Paris, I am married to a white woman. My goodness me!

TM: Your Excellency! Don't you have the fact that some of these leaders are afraid? We have seen the West using force as you just mentioned in Libya, are African leaders safe from this use of force?
President Mugabe: If we have been that cowardly, would we have fought? We were prepared to go to prison, to go to jail, to die for our independence? Now that you are independent and you have the capacity to build resistance much more than we had before, why should we be more afraid than we were, more afraid than our predecessors?

Tanzania, Kenya when they assisted us. Tanzania, Zambia when they assisted us, Mozambique, go to Cuba just now, very poor, you feel pity but Castro is still manufacturing doctors.

He has made up his mind to train doctors. South Africa has 400, we get 200, every country, even Latin America has Cuban doctors. Good ones.

But he has got those sanctions imposed on him by America but he is still doing that good work, unafraid.

Once upon a time America threatened to attack him and in fact, there was a time he had to fight.

You must be prepared, you just must be prepared, even as small as you are, to stand for your principles and say do or die here I stand. That is what revolutions bid us to be.

If leaders are going to act in a sheepish way, then they are not fit to be leaders at all. You have principles, whether Europe likes them or not, these are the principles that guide me and guide my country, I stand by them.

Like them, dislike them, they are our principles in Zimbabwe, we stand by them. We are a sovereign State, here we stand, here we are. Recognise us, don't recognise us but this is what we are.

TM: Let me take you back home, what role does Amai play in your every day work? Pane nguva here yekuti munosvika moti there is this burning issue yanga yakadai, what is your view?
President Mugabe: Sure she contributes quite a lot. She has taken to helping abandoned children, orphans and is building an orphanage. Very spirited about it, she is there almost every day, she goes there and comes back.

Yes we discuss, we discuss family matters, we discuss the fate of our own children. Their future and so on, we plan together.

Sure we discuss all things, politics and we see things alike. She is playing her part.

TM: Ko vana varikukuraka ava. Do they also have political ambitions?
President Mugabe: I don't know. Bellarmine always says I want to be President and so on, but I say you must pass, you see, the President, baba vane madegree mangani? Can you do that?

But leading kids, he is going to be writing his Form 4 this year, writing exams this year.

So Bona is the most serious of them all. She loves to do a Masters and be a chartered accountant but she wants to do the Masters first. It takes a year but she is with a chartered firm now.

TM: Eighty-eight years makore akawanda chaizvo. Vamwe vachiti vaMugabe varikurwara. What advice would you give to the youths kuti vagare hupenyu hwakanaka.
President Mugabe: Life is what you make it, they say but its not always what you make it. You have part of it which is inherited. The physical entity, we inherit from the parents.

Your genetic system derives what your parents gave you and if you have had ancestors who lived long, you also live long. That's what happens, you see.

But there are things that you must do for yourself. Don't and if you want to drink, don't drink too much but I would say don't drink at all.

Don't smoke at all. When you smoke, the nicotine goes straight to your lungs. It's a sure case that your lungs are getting, you are inhaling but of course the sensation is nice to some of our people but look after yourself morally.

Girlfriends, when you are young, you have two or three but you make your choice and get married.

Little houses, some little houses are dangerous nowadays. You don't know the occupant in the little house is all that healthy. Nechirwere chedu chakauya ichi.

I have seen young men, in the extended family, just going one after another. As I speak kune madzimai akasiyiwa. We have had to look after them, you know, you try to give them work.

You know madzimai anouya kuzosakura and I give them a bit of some money just to keep them going. Havachisina varume.

And I say to myself, if this is what has happened around me kuextended family, ko around the extended family yaTazzen ne my neighbour there? Is this what has happened to our nation?

Young people going in their 30s, 40s. No! We must look after ourselves better. So that is the part we take care of, the other part we inherit it from our parents.

If you inherit a genetic system which is good, at some stage you should look after it.