Zimpapers Logo

President Mugabe address the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York last night.

Tendai Mugabe at the UNITED NATIONS, New York
SANCTIONS as a tool to abet regime change in Zimbabwe have dismally failed as shown by Zanu-PF’s resounding victory in the harmonised elections and Westerners should immediately remove their ruinous punitive embargoes, President Mugabe has said.
Addressing the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly here yesterday, the President rapped Britain and the United States for advocating relative democracy by refusing to accept the widely hailed harmonised elections.

President Mugabe trounced MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai with 61,09 percent of the presidential vote to 33,94 with the other three presidential aspirants sharing the remaining 4,97 percent; with Zanu-PF clinching 160 seats out of the 210 National Assembly constituencies to get a crushing 76 percent dominance.

After factoring in 60 women’s quota seats elected by proportional representation of six for each of the country’s 10 provinces, the final composition of the 270 member National Assembly comes to 197 seats for Zanu-PF, 70 for MDC-T, two for MDC, and one independent giving Zanu-PF just under 73 percent of the total seats in the National Assembly, but well over the two thirds majority of 180 seats.

“If these sanctions were imposed to effect illegal regime change, well, the results of the recent national elections have clearly shown what they can do,” President Mugabe said.

“Moreover, these illegal sanctions continue to inflict economic deprivation and human suffering on all Zimbabweans.
“In the eyes of our people, the sanctions constitute a form of hostility and violence against them for the simple crime of undertaking the land reform programme by which land was put in the hands of the majority landless Zimbabweans.”

The decade-long sanctions regime, he said, violated provisions of the UN Charter on State sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States.

President Mugabe rapped Western powers for their habitual and abhorrent intimidation of Zimbabwe in a bid to control its resources.
“Our small and peaceful country is threatened daily by covetous and bigoted big powers whose hunger for domination of other nations and their resources has no bounds,” he said.

“Shame, shame, shame to the United States of America. Shame, shame, shame to Britain and its allies. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans, so are its resources. Please remove your illegal and filthy sanctions on my country.”

President Mugabe denounced the Western countries for their hypocritical tendencies of preaching democracy they never practice in their backyards.

Zimbabwe, he said, refused to be lectured on democracy and freedom by such duplicitous countries.
“We are preached to daily by the West on the virtues of democracy and freedom they do not totally espouse,” he said.
“Zimbabwe took up arms to precisely achieve our freedom and democracy. Yet we have been punished by the United States through the odious Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act enacted in 2001 to effect regime change in the country.

“Zimbabwe, however, refuses that these Western detractors define democracy and freedom. We paid the ultimate price for it and we shall never relinquish our sovereignty! As we have repeatedly asserted, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.”

President Mugabe said the US was now pursuing its spiteful persecution of Zimbabweans by rejecting the results of the harmonised elections where the western-sponsored MDC-T slumped to its worst defeat since its launch 14 years ago.

He said this was despite the overwhelming endorsement of the polls by the African Union and other regional bodies that certified the elections free, peaceful, fair, credible and a reflection of the will of Zimbabweans.

President Mugabe said Zimbabwe remained committed to the common African position known as the Ezulwini Consensus which demands the continent to have a permanent representation in the Security Council and fair representation in the non-permanent membership category.

He said Zimbabwe supported efforts to revitalise the UN General Assembly, the biggest and most representative organ of the UN.
In this regard, President Mugabe said, the General Assembly should take a lead in setting the global agenda and restore its primacy that had been encroached by other organs over the years.

“We cannot accept a situation whereby the UN Security Council is increasingly encroaching on issues that traditionally fall within the General Assembly’s purview and competence, including in the area of norm setting,” he said.

“Indeed, recent events have revealed that its formal decisions have provided camouflage to neo-imperialist forces of aggression seeking to militarily intervene in smaller countries in order to effect regime change and acquire complete control of their wealth.”

President Mugabe said such a scenario happened in Libya where NATO forces were deployed on false pretext of protecting civilians in order to eliminate Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

“A similar campaign had been undertaken in Iraq by Bush and Blair forces in the false name of eradicating weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein never possessed,” said the President.

He hailed efforts by the UN General Assembly in promoting multilateralism instead of unilateralism.
President Mugabe said Zimbabwe appreciated the consultations and negotiations on the eventual destruction of the chemical weapons in Syria.

He expressed gratitude to the role played by Russia and China in blocking the war mongering US from unilaterally bombing Syria without verifiable evidence that Bashar al-Assad was indeed responsible for the use of chemical weapons.