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President Mugabe

Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter
The West is using non-governmental organisations to impose puppet governments in Africa and the current Ivorian administration is an example of a country that cannot make independent decisions without consulting France, African Union chairman President Mugabe has said. Côte d’Ivoire is currently led by President Alassane Ouattara who violently replaced President Laurent Gbagbo with the aid of France in 2011.

President Mugabe said Côte d’Ivoire under President Ouattara’s leadership, was the only African country that denied him entry in his capacity as the African Union chair because the French disliked him.

Addressing the Zanu-PF Central Committee meeting in Harare yesterday, President Mugabe said he was invited in his capacity as the African Union chairman to close an African Development Bank meeting held in the West African country recently, but could not make it after the host president gave a sudden excuse that he had fallen sick.

Although President Ouattara had initially cleared President Mugabe’s visit, what was strange was the fact that the Ivorian authorities refused to clear his aircraft’s landing.

“The whole of Africa now knows that the strategy of NGOs is a way of trying to get power, silent power to affect our economy, to affect our own systems of government,” said President Mugabe.

“In some places, governments have actually fallen and leaders have come out of the underground movements pursued by our erstwhile colonisers. Leaders have been changed as in Francophone countries by France. A leader who yesterday was supporting France, if they now begin to adopt policies opposed to France, that leader must go. In some cases, unashamedly and in a blatant way, France has actually sent its unit of soldiers to remove the President from power. They did this in Côte d’Ivoire and imposed Ouattara. When a leader is imposed that way, he will behave now as is regarded by France — to be in line with its own national interests.”

Added President Mugabe: “I will tell you what happened to me as chairman of African Union. There was a meeting in Côte d’Ivoire of Finance Ministers and (Patrick) Chinamasa was there. One of our African development banks was having a meeting there and I was asked to address that meeting at its opening. I couldn’t go because I was going for the inauguration of (Muhammadu) Buhari the Nigerian president — to see him take office.

“So the AfDB people said since you were not able to come, (by the way the bank is headquartered in Cote d’Ivoire, but it is an African bank) for the opening, can you come at the closure and just make a statement? I was now in Nigeria. I said fine, I will come on my way back home.

“But of course, we travel by air and the airline must clear itself — the aircraft must be cleared for landing if you want to land in any place. Their own civil air systems there, on consultation with their authorities must say yes. Now the request to land in Côte d’Ivoire was denied us. We waited and waited, no. We asked (Minister) Chinamasa what is happening — is Ouattara there? Chinamasa said, yes, a minister had told me that Ouattara had said I could come.

“The President cannot just go to a country without being cleared by another president who owns the country. That is the protocol. So what has happened? Then they said Ouattara has fallen sick. He is in bed. He is in bed and so no clearance was given. So we didn’t go to Cote d’Ivoire to deliver the speech to our African Development Bank.

“It is the only country in Africa that has denied us entry. So, why? Because Ouattara was imposed on Ivory Coast by France and France removed the president who was there to be tried under the International Criminal Court.

“That is what you get. So, when I tell the story to other presidents, ah why, because Mugabe is not wanted by France. He is a dangerous man. So we didn’t go, but AfDB is our bank.”

He said in another case the Government invited the president of a certain African country to come and open the Trade Fair in Bulawayo last year. He said although the president initially agreed, he later refused to come two weeks before the Trade Fair saying he had an urgent meeting with his neighbours.

President Mugabe said he was later told by Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo that the invited president was under pressure from France not to come.