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External aid not enough: Mugabe
02/07/2007 08:11 - (SA)
Susan Njanji
Accra - Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe, under fire at home over a crumbling economy, said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire.
He said: "To tell you the truth, until and unless we put our act together, organise and start pulling our resources together, we will never ever prosper from any aid from any source outside Africa." He was speaking in a rally on the fringes of an African Union summit in Ghana.
About a thousand placard and flag waving Ghanaians, many sporting t-shirts with the portrait of the 83-year old Mugabe, attended the rally at Kwameh Nkrumah Memorial Park in Accra.
Mugabe said: "We must unite, not just politically but economically." He was speaking to a cheering crowd in the city hosting a twice-yearly meeting of African heads of state.
'AU is not united'
The three-day AU summit, which opened on Sunday, had been billed by some as an opportunity to forge a so-called United States of Africa, with Libya's Muammar Gadaffi calling for a common defence and foreign policy.
He said: "Although there is the umbrella of unity, but within this unity we are not united."
Punctuating his speech with a reference to Ghana's revered architect of pan-Africanism, Mugabe said today's Africa is lacking the vision Nkrumah outlined in 1963 when the predecessor body of the AU, the Organisation of African Union was formed.
He said: "Nkrumah wanted the creation of a United States of Africa in 1963, but others said it was too early, and 44 years later, others are still saying we are not ready.
"We are producers of oil, but look at what is happening, mismanagement and corruption. We must correct this."
Prosperous continent
Mugabe was speaking in a country, which was soon to join the club of Africa's oil producers after a British firm last month announced the discovery of oil off Ghana's shore.
He said: "If we were to organise ourselves in a unified form, in a united way, we would certainly emerge as a prosperous continent."
Zimbabwe was reeling from a world record annual inflation rate of more than 4 000% and food shortages.
Mugabe did not mention the crisis at home, but instead went into details of how his country was pushed to the edge and seized land from whites on grounds that the colonial ruler, Britain had reneged on its pledges to pay for a land reform scheme.
Mugabe also took a swipe at the US President George W Bush and Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, over the Iraq war.
He said: "These are the two people who have spoiled our world. And now they come up with all kinds of things, saying they will help Africa."
- AFP
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