'Condoleeza Rice is anti-black'
2005-01-22 12:12
Special Report
Zimbabwe's constitutional affairs minister has cast doubt on President Robert Mugabe's bid to hold elections this year.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Harare - Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper on Saturday launched a vitriolic attack on US secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice, calling her anti-black and an apologist for "white sins".
A weekly column compared Rice to her predecessor, Colin Powell, whom it called an "Uncle Tom", a put-down of a black who is overeager to win the approval of whites.
"She is a black woman who will be manly and white in her relentless assault on blacks, their liberties and their remnant and dwindling sovereignities," said the column.
"She will be a black who washes away the sins of white power as it bludgeons non-white states."
The comments came after Rice on Tuesday branded Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe as "outposts of tyranny".
The Herald said Rice was a "genuine door bell whose chime announces the arrival of the white Bush, the same way her 'outposts of tyranny' speech foreshadowed and set the tone for Bush's inauguration one."
"She is no denizen of the black square, a place she associates with failure, dishonour and shame," it said, adding that those who expected her to "proclaim the cause of the black man and woman, demanding atonement," would be bitterly disappointed.
The Herald predicted that Rice would be the "alto horn that leads and plays harbinger to Bush's bass as it thunders and rings across the globe with Iraq as its lighter prelude."
The Zimbabwean government on Friday dismissed Rice's comments, saying Harare was unruffled about what "fascists" thought of it.
"The western world is now composed and governed by fascists," Zimbabwe's Anti-Corruption Minister Didymus Mutasa said, when asked about Rice's comments.
"When you look at the way that Iraq is, and the way the Palestinians have been ignored, and the way that we and others who are socialists are being treated, you cannot doubt that these people are fascists," said Mutasa.
"The best we can do is to ignore them and just work for the good of our people."
- AFP