He asserted that South Africa needs help to get full liberation. He said the absence of full liberation explains the xenophobic attacks in the country. The nonagenarian Mugabe was addressing journalists at the end of his visit to the SADC secretariat in Gaborone. He said other Africans should not be blamed for the unemployment problems in South African. “It is not the other Africans who are to blame. It is the whites who have kept opportunities for themselves, who have kept the rights they have allocated to themselves long ago before the political dispensation that was brought in by (Nelson) Mandela after his release. That political dispensation did not address the question of disparities between whites and blacks. Most of the land is in the hands of the whites who are a minority,” Mugabe said.
He added that most employment opportunities in South Africa are taken up by whites and the topic is never discussed in public forums. He said that this must be addressed before the blame can be allocated to foreigners in South Africa. He said that it is going to be difficult for the South African government to address the issue of unemployment when the same whites who oppressed blacks are still in control of the economy. “When you have people who are in fact those we called oppressors yesterday still in the position, occupying the positions, and the advantages and the opportunities that they had allocated to themselves during colonialism, and they still hang on to them, then you have a difficult situation. This is what South Africa must be helped to overcome,” he said. Mugabe said that South Africa is the only country in the African continent that is still lagging behind in land redistribution. “It is a different story in the whole of Africa. So we must help them. They need another liberation,” he said. The Zimbabwean leader said he was impressed with the manner in which the SADC secretariat management has given direction to projects agreed upon by leaders of the regional bloc. He was particularly happy with the progress of infrastructure development and regional integration. He said that the programme on transformation of SADC member states’ economies is on the right track. The programme is meant to create jobs and halt the exportation of raw materials to industrialised countries. Mugabe said the regional body is working on ways to grow the private sector to benefit the citizens.
