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President Mugabe

Paidamoyo Chipunza Senior Reporter
President Mugabe yesterday slammed the US government’s double standards of imposing illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe yet surviving on China’s benevolence.

Speaking at the commissioning ceremony of medical equipment sourced under China’s Exim Bank loan at Harare Central Hospital yesterday, President Mugabe said the US was rescued by China during its worst economic crisis recently.

However, US president Barrack Obama’s administration on Tuesday announced the extension of the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe beginning today, saying “actions and policies of these persons (Government of Zimbabwe) continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.’’

Said President Mugabe: “It’s China which sustained America — I want this loud enough for Obama to hear — sustained America during their economic crisis through the bonds, American bonds which they bought, trillion dollars worth of bonds.

“If they (Chinese) had decided to abandon those (bonds) and decided that they needed to be paid straight on — but Americans did not have money to pay for those trillion bonds which the Chinese had acquired — no they let them and we were not happy that China let America go free,” he said.

However, today, President Mugabe said, the US was now a prisoner to China and was still dependent on it.

“They are actually now prisoner to China and we are praying that the Chinese will not demand payment that time, but, well, you heard what happened; so now they are back to the same position, but again they are very dependent on China,” he said.

“So they are now — the Chinese — really economically the strongest country in the world in my own reckoning. But no, they are humble enough; they say no we are not that high yet. The humility of a winner,” he said.

President Mugabe also cited an example of Japan, which he said Zimbabwe and other countries were copying from in terms of technology.

“What we have decided to do is to copy the technology, apply it and study it much more, try to improve on it and then excel, that’s what they are doing,” he said.

“So, it’s not just Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans looking East; even America is looking East, even developed Europe is looking East. You go to America and look at the goods that they have there. They have taken even all their technology,” said President Mugabe.

President Mugabe said when Zimbabwe adopted the Look East policy, some people were against the idea, but Zimbabwe remained firm because it was the East that assisted her since the liberation struggle.

“They said ahh, what can the Chinese do, but we knew them and we knew what they were doing. We knew how they were transforming their social economic system,” he said.

President Mugabe said because Zimbabwe could not give in its sovereignty to ‘a Mr (Tony) Blair (former British Prime Minister) or Mr some Englishman’ it adopted the Look East Policy.

“So, we moved on and we said if the West do not want to be friends with us, we had been friends with China for a long time, let’s adopt the Look East policy,” he said.

He said Zimbabweans had to re-orientate themselves and instead of regarding development assistance as coming from the West, they had to regard it as coming from the East.

He said China was Zimbabwe’s all-weather friend, chronicling how it assisted the country since 1976 with ammunition to gain its independence from Britain.

“I went to the Chinese every year from about 1976 to ask for arms, arms of the liberation of our people and every year I was given arms to equip a whole brigade,” he said.

Zimbabwe has signed many mega deals with China in the health, education, energy and infrastructure development, among others, to resuscitate the country’s economy.