US embassy cable - 04HARARE351

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000351 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, ZI 
SUBJECT: MUGABE CLOSES THE DOORS AND WINDOWS TO DIALOGUE 
AND BASHES SOME AFRICAN LEADERS 
 
REF: FBIS AFP20040226000116 
 
1. (SBU) In a long, rambling birthday interview with a 
slavish Zimbabwe Broadcast Corporation Newsnet interviewer, 
President Mugabe all but ruled out dialogue with the MDC and 
clumsily sought to divide the MDC from its President, Morgan 
Tsvangirai. Mugabe criticized many African leaders, including 
 
SIPDIS 
Nigeria, as being dictated to by the West for not supporting 
Zimbabwe at the Abuja CHOGM meeting.  Mugabe blasted the IMF, 
even as his Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono is seeking to 
re-establish relations with both the World Bank and the Fund. 
 Then in a bizarre note, Mugabe claimed that a cook had 
attempted to kill him by putting glass in his food, although 
this was more likely due to witchcraft than to "Western 
imperialism."  Mugabe said he expected to be retired in five 
years; i.e. by 2009, the year after expiration of his current 
presidential term. Comment: Mugabe was alternately quite 
lucid and rambling.  His comments about no dialogue with the 
MDC devil are a flat repudiation of what he said publicly in 
President Mbeki's presence in December. And Mugabe's 
undercutting of the efforts of his Reserve Bank and insulting 
of other African leaders are vintage Mugabe -- he alone rules 
and says what he feels like.  End Summary 
 
2. (U) Text excerpts follow (Paragraph leads added): 
 
MDC IS THE DEVIL, ESPECIALLY TSVANGIRAI, AND WE WON'T SUP OR 
DIALOGUE WITH THE DEVIL 
 
 
NEWSNET:  The majority of people in the opposition are 
benefciaries of your successful policies in education and 
indigenization of the economy.  They go about campaigning for 
sanctions against you and your Government and join forces 
with Western imperial forces to get you out of power and 
undermine efforts to improve the lives of Zimbabweans as well 
as defend the gains of independence.  Do you, both as a 
teacher and President, feel disappointed?  Does this not make 
you feel like giving up? 
 
PRESIDENT:  No, I don't feel like giving up, to give up is to 
surrender and I don't have that habit.  But if they are going 
to now seek the hand of our enemy to destroy our economy, 
then we begin to wonder whether they are for the people or 
against the people. 
 
If you want the economy to be ruined then what you are 
seeking is that your people must suffer, you want your people 
to suffer.  Is that the policy of the MDC?  If it is the 
policy of the MDC then it stands to be rejected by the people 
and the people must condemn them for it. 
 
And we have said if that is their stance, their policy, then 
negotiations which they want can't take place.  We can't 
discuss with people whose ideas are against our society.  We 
can't discuss with allies of the Western countries that would 
want to destroy our economy.  What will we be doing?  Our 
people will say we are being foolish, the devil is the devil. 
 There can never be an occasion which you can sup with him. 
So, e-eh, we would rather not have the devil at all.  What I 
might say is that there are some good people in the MDC, some 
well disposed persons who look at things differently from how 
Tsvangirai looks at them.  I didn't know, it's unfortunate 
 
SIPDIS 
that the depth of understanding and appreciation of some of 
the members of the MDC is very shallow. 
 
Those of them with deeper depth are the ones who would want 
discussion and we encourage those to discuss with our own 
people, progressive ideas.  But then when we discuss and 
arrive at certain conclusions, those conclusions will not be 
acceptable to people with shallow ideas and I don't know how 
it's going to happen because those that have been discussing 
with our own people have found that some of their own ideas 
are not acceptable to their seniors and this is the 
difficulty, but there is expectation in Europe that we 
discuss with the MDC and surrender to the MDC. 
 
Of course, we will not do that.  We surrender to our people, 
our people have the authority to remove us.  They are the 
only ones who we think are superior to our Government.  No 
one else not even Mr. Blair, not even Mr. Bush.  We yield to 
our own people and to no one else. 
 
NEWSNET:  Is there any basis for dialogue and understanding 
between Zanu-PF and the MDC the same way as was the case 
between Zanu-PF and PF-Zapu in the 1980s? 
 
PRESIDENT:  No, that kind of basis, of course, it does not.. 
 
This is a creature born yes within us but out of the British 
using their friends so out of their desire by certain 
European countries to have an opposition here which could 
remove the revolutionary Government of the country and 
replace it naturally with one of their own making.  So whilst 
they are our people, the members of the MDC, really the party 
was born out of that desire abroad.  So we regard it as a 
party that is really not home-grown.  It's grown elsewhere in 
Europe and transplanted here and so there it is. 
 
But we are not saying we can't discuss with it because the 
members of the party are our own children, our own people and 
if they have certain ideas, well let us get their ideas.  All 
we have said is that that umbilical cord you see, must be 
severed.  If you sever it, then try to be part of us.  Try to 
think as Zimbabweans, as Africans, then naturally you have 
your room.  We accord you that facility of negotiating with 
us. 
 
But as long as they are dictated to you from abroad then we 
find it extremely difficult to negotiate with them but that 
having been said, we stand ready to hear what news they have, 
e-eh, Welshman Ncube and one or two others who are 
negotiating with Chinamasa, Goche on our side. 
 
But these negotiations or shall I say the conclusions they 
reached had not been taken to the party yet.  They still 
remained on their own desk and we say conclude them and then 
we will look at them. 
 
MANY AFRICAN LEADERS ARE BEING DICTATED TO BY THE WEST, 
INCLUDING NIGERIA 
 
NEWSNET:  You are among the heroes of the fight against 
colonialism on the continent that managed to rid Africa of 
colonialism.  Now it seems the continent is under sustained 
attack, for some under second colonial attack.  Is the 
continent ready for this kind of war?  Does it have new 
Nkrumahs, Nyereres and Samora Machels? 
 
PRESIDENT:  No, it's a pity  that we don't have those 
anymore.  E-eh, we have, yes, some militant leaders but a 
few, the majority of them have gone the Western way.  Western 
philosophy is what is guiding them, they are oriented towards 
the West, not oriented towards Africa, not nationalistic in 
the true sense of the word.  They are listening to the enemy, 
they are being dictated by the enemy and it's a pity that the 
old type of leadership has vanished from the sea. 
 
NEWSNET:  Just what happened in Abuja and did your colleagues 
by way of African and other Third World presidents and prime 
ministers keep you informed of the goings on or were you kept 
guessing like a prisoner in a cell?  Would you regard Abuja 
as a failure of the Third World solidarity or a case of 
unanimous condemnation of bad government by developed and 
developed countries? 
 
PRESIDENT:  No, the SADC leaders were briefing us and they 
took a stance as you are aware of opposing the decision to 
isolate Zimbabwe in Abuja and we were happy about their 
stance and they will remain supporting Zimbabwe.  The others 
well, well, well we say sorry, sorry, sorry to Nigeria for 
having adopted that stand but they are brothers we can't be 
seen to be condemning them. 
 
NEWSNET:  But if you are looking at the stance that was taken 
by others.  Would you say it was a matter of being convinced 
by the West or basically they were condemning bad governance 
in Zimbabwe? 
 
PRESIDENT:  Which others? 
 
NEWSNET:  Those who decided to side with the West who did not 
come to support Zimbabwe. 
 
PRESIDENT:  Yes, two or three African countries in the 
Commonwealth.  Ya-ah there are yes people those who salute 
the West.  That's it and it's just again leadership which has 
no confidence in itself. 
 
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT -- COOKS AND WITCHCRAFT OR WATCH YOUR 
PORRIDGE 
 
PRESIDENT:  It wasn't a glass.  It was some porridge.  It 
wasn't that clear I think it might have been some glass, bits 
of broken glass that found themselves included in the mealie 
meal but it happened I don't want to say it was deliberate 
because I wouldn't quite agree that it was so deliberate. 
Yes, there were these bits of glass we discovered but that 
was it.  I don't think it would have anything to do with 
western imperialism.  Western imperialism can be much more 
thorough than that.  It was just some internal thing. 
 
Perhaps the cook was not happy ... .  So we just explained it 
in that the ambiguous way, one that it might have been 
accidental, two that it was not accidental and deliberate and 
the cook might have been spoken to by some witch .... 
 
MUGABE TO RETIRE, BUT ONLY IN FIVE YEARS 
 
NEWSNET:  Your Excellency, looking into the future, looking 
in the crystal ball where do we find Robert Mugabe in five 
years? 
 
PRESIDENT:  In five years, here, still boxing.  Writing quite 
a lot, reading quite a lot and still in politics.  I won't 
leave politics but I would have retired obviously. 
 
 
 
SULLIVAN