Interview with Robert Mugabe

Interviewer:                       Mr. President, land is the alpha and omega of the politics, the economy, and indeed the history of the Zimbabwe. Before and after independence land has been the central issue defining the national programme of this country. Why is land is such an important and emotive issue?

Robert Mugabe:               Well, land is our creator. In other words, people like myself were born in the country, and we got attached to the land because there was the livelihood of the country people, the peasants and indeed the livelihood of even those who had drifted into town. It was on land that we had our residences up round huts, on the land that we walked, land that we tilled for all of that we ate, and on land that the grazing was for our cattle, goats and sheep, that was the life. Land is crucial, land is part of me, part of others, part of our people. You can't detach yourself from land.

Interviewer:                       Why the emphasis on land and why not other means of production?

Robert Mugabe:               Land comes first. Agriculture first, you must take care of the resource that supplies you with total life first, the others come after. Yes, in an economy which is developed beyond the subsistence level, then you must look at other areas, look at that which is grown on land, produced on land as it gets added value in the factories, then you have the manufacturing sector. You must look also on land as the source of the minerals.

Robert Mugabe:               So to us, that entity, that resource, once it seized to be ours, created a sense of deprivation, deep sense of deprivation, and as we looked back after colonialism, it established itself. The greatest loss that was failed was that of land, and people talked of the land they had lost, lost to the white man, shall it ever come back. When we organised our struggle, the first of the grievances was that of the loss of our land. The fight for land.

Interviewer:                       It was the main issue when you waged the struggle?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes.

Interviewer:                       Again, if I'm correct, it was the main issue on the agenda at Lancaster House?

Robert Mugabe:               It was the main issue, it became the main issue at Lancaster House, because of the very essence, that value that it has always had.

Interviewer:                       Perhaps Mr President, we should go back to the drawing board and find out exactly what were the Lancaster House agreements with regard to land and the redistribution of land.

Robert Mugabe:               Lancaster House constitution discussions, yes, centred on quite a number of areas of great importance to us. True, the land issue was crucial, the land issue was uppermost in our mind, but then the land had been lost to the whites. We had to think of the best way of winning back the power that we had lost, the power over land. But when we looked at land situation alone, it was now in the context of the loss of our sovereign rights, sovereignty then was the first thing, shall we have sovereignty? How shall we have it? We said we would have it through the battle of the gun after trying all the nonmilitary nonviolent methods.

Robert Mugabe:               We had to negotiate of course the modality that would lead us to our recapturing, regaining our sovereignty, and that's what the Lancaster House constitutional conference was about. So sovereignty first, one man one vote as we called it at the time, now one person one vote. Yes. One man one vote would naturally yield majority for us, and then the battle would mean the sovereignty power coming back to us. In that constitutional way, although, the fight had been through a violent method, yeah.

Interviewer:                       What did the talk say about land?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes. Then as we discussed that whole issue of sovereignty, how power shall unfold, what institutions we shall have, parliament, the executive, the judiciary. We then wanted to dwell on the issue of how the ownership by the whites of our land will now be seeded to us, in other words, how we were going to get our land back. It was recognised by the British government, that indeed the issue of land was fundamental, was crucial, but then the issue of how we would get it became the question. We said we wanted it back at the expense of the British, not at our own expense. In other words, we were not prepared to pay compensation for land that was seized from us without any purchase price being paid to our ancestors.

Robert Mugabe:               It was the obligation of the British to find money and compensate their keep and keen, were owners, legal owners of our land, we refused completely to carry that burden, and we were deadlocked on the matter. The Americans, the ambassador, that was the Carter regime at the time, Carter administration. Their ambassador in London talked to Sonny Ramphal, who was the secretary general of the common wealth. America was prepared to fund the land reform programme. If our funds and those of Britain were to put together, you'd have an adequate fund, but we shall also together with the British appeal to the rest of the world and especially Europe, you see? To assist you.

Interviewer:                       So it ended on that road?

Robert Mugabe:               The Americans said [inaudible] to say that, what they wouldn't like to do or to be known, is that we were giving you money for purposes of helping you with the land reform including compensation. We will say it's money for land reform resettlement and development without the compensation aspect, because the American national would not want to hear that money has come off out of his pocket and run into the pockets of the British-

Interviewer:                       Citizens

Robert Mugabe:               ... citizens in Zimbabwe. That would create problems for us.

Interviewer:                       So there is a question of the technical allowance?

Robert Mugabe:               There are just how we shall camouflage it.

Robert Mugabe:               But how you will use it, is entirely your issue. But from our point of view, that's the way we shall do it. Okay. When that happened, and we talked to Lord Carrington, he said, “Yes, I understand America was going to give money.” So the issue is now resolved, but he still said, "You might also want one of the weekends to go to Brussels and talk to the EEC commissioners as it still was-

Robert Mugabe:               ... and [Gorman Ryan 00:14:35] arranged to do that and we flew on a Friday, one Friday evening to meet members of the commission and they also pledged assistance towards the land resettlement programme. That is what happened at Lancaster, and this is how the deadlock was broken, naturally of course, nothing was written in detail about what had transpired, but we took for granted that everyone was a gentleman and what they had said would be realised in practise and that's how we proceeded. Fortunately for us now, Lord Carrington as in the House of Lords about two months ago, later confirmed that yes, there was the undertaking to assist, which Blair has not accepted all along.

Interviewer:                       Then after independence, money made available due to the Thatcher and the Rhodian governments subsequent to the Carter administration make funds available to enable you to proceed with the land distribution programme.

Robert Mugabe:               The first two or three years show us receiving quite ... I should say significant flows of funds from the United States. I think the United States owned funding came first. The British funding was on what you might call reluctant basis, hesitant basis. All of a sudden, the British wanted us to go about the business of funding, the programme on a 50, 50 basis, and they said they wouldn't produce their own 50 pounds unless we had produced our side of that funding first. In other words, it was 50, 50.

Interviewer:                       You bring something to the table?

Robert Mugabe:               We must bring first, it is as if now we were playing cards, then gambling, you see? Put yours on the-

Interviewer:                       Yes, yes. On the table.

Robert Mugabe:               ... on the table, and I put mine [crosstalk] but you see, this is how the British do it. Sly and cunning and then dependable in the extreme. We had to fight this, and it was only after two years that they now relented on it and said, “Okay, we will fund the process.” But at the end of the day we didn't get much more than about 40, probably about 40 million pounds. From the Americans, well, unfortunately, Carter lost the election that followed a year or two afterwards after Lancaster and in came Reagan.

Robert Mugabe:               Reagan was a strictly character, rigid, didn't know very much in the sense, he was quite an ignorant president. One of the most ignorant presidents Americans had. Each time he spoke to you ... I happened to have been invited by him. Unless he had got the information on his cards in advance and they could read the card and answer you, his people would say, "Oh no he cannot answer that question," and then so and so forth. He was playing cards [inaudible] discussing with you and I joked about it and said, "You don't want to discuss with a man who is playing cards all the time." He didn't know the situation, Carter did know.

Robert Mugabe:               But Reagan also thought we were die hard communists. On that basis, he stopped the aid that Carter had brought into being. His reasoning was that, at the United Nations, we tended to support the Soviet Union and China more than we supported the United States. When Bush succeeded him, Bush had visited [inaudible] handled him very well, we had become friends. He wrote a note to me to say, "Ah, let bygones be bygones," and he said, "lets start again, start a fresh, start on a fresh slate." We tried to start on a flesh slate but now there was very little that came back to us after we had lost it.

Robert Mugabe:               On the other hand the British had stopped their aid. So we tried to negotiate with them, negotiate with Thatcher, we didn't succeed. Later, Thatcher was out, and John Major came in, we started negotiations and Major was understanding, he had been here attending CHOGM and in 1995, '96 thereabouts, he agreed to send a team here to look at the situation here and hear our views across the government over various opinions, and his six man team wrote out a report which was very good, very favourable, and we expected that sooner or later the British would respond favourably, but then there came an elections in Britain and Major lost and in came Blair, and Blair had the problems that you see, have come out of him.

Interviewer:                       With hindsight, Mr. President, what is your analysis? Do you think they were buying time?

Robert Mugabe:               No, Major meant well, but he didn't have the time in which to fulfil his wish to assist. Blair was negative from the very beginning. He began by telling me when ... the only moment we met and discussed, and that was during CHOGM in Scotland, telling me that he had the team looking at the issue and he would soon let us know what the position of his Labour government was. But they never came back to us, all we heard was, there is no responsibility, colonial responsibility anymore that Britain should discharge, all that they owed us was done in the past and nothing more.

Interviewer:                       So when did the wheels exactly come off?

Robert Mugabe:               They came off, they started coming off then. We then tried to educate them and to emphasise the issue and then lighten them in various ways, and remind them of the obligations that they had, especially of the promises and the undertaking at Lancaster House. But no, they wouldn't listen to that. Clare Short said the only way they could assist our situation was if it fell under the poverty alleviation programme that they were now building up.

Interviewer:                       In fact, Mr President, I would like to refer you to a letter that was written by the British International Development Minister, Clare Short, and you have just mentioned, a letter written on the 5th of November, 1997 to your minister of agriculture and land, the honourable Kumbirai Kangai. In the letter, Ms. Short wrote, “I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers.” It went on and on-

Robert Mugabe:               And then-

Interviewer:                       ... concluding by saying, “I am told there were discussions in 1989 and 1996 to explore the possibility of further assistance. However, that is all in the past.” Suggesting that the matter was closed, how was this received by your government?

Robert Mugabe:               Very badly. It was a negative response to an issue that was very, very ... shall I say the dynamo here, it is explosive in the sense that the issue of land has been the one grievance in our bosoms that we hope to Britain working together with us, and doing so positively would help us have a remedy too, but the grievance went on and of course we said when she wrote us to this effect that, ah, so this is the negative attitude, fine, this is a government which knows no rules, doesn't accept the law of succession as it obtains in international law because successor government must-

Interviewer:                       Honour the obligations.

Robert Mugabe:               Obligations, as in deed, it must enjoy the assets of its predecessor. Then they had apparently no rules, no principles. So we said, “Fine, if they're going to behave that way, we will also here ignore completely the issue of adhering to the principles of compensation of the farmer.” So we will check our land, they keep their money we keep our land.

Interviewer:                       So take our land by force or whatever means?

Robert Mugabe:               Well that's how we said we would proceed now. We would pay compensation only for improvements, anything that one can call developmental on the farm, an irrigation scheme, dam, fencing homestead we'll pay compensation for, but not for the land itself, the market value of the land, no. That is what we said we would do, we were then going to have a new constitution and in that constitution we wanted the issue of compensation, which had existed in the Lancaster House constitution to be amended, so it could read that compensation will only be paid, sorry, adequate compensation will only be paid upon adequate funds being made available by the former colonial power.

Robert Mugabe:               When it was put to the country, the whites almost all rallied behind the opposition too and opposed it. Merely because of that compensation amendment regarding compensation. They didn't want it, and we began to wonder why they would refuse compensation because they didn't want the land to go at all. So, we read as they rallied openly behind the opposition and gave it, was giving it funds and were giving it funds that they were not for us, they were for land remaining in their hands.

Robert Mugabe:               Even before we sat here as the party or as government to put our programme together of acquiring land now, the war veterans on their own using their own association started operating and going in onto fund [inaudible] without any prompting from us. We said, “Fine, good.” They fought for freedom and it was freedom with the land as the gain, the major gain, they wanted us to use our police. We [inaudible] said no, we will not use our police at all, these are demonstrations.

Interviewer:                       But as government wasn't there a way of dissuading the war of veterans and pursue the legal route?

Robert Mugabe:               The British had never used a legal route to seize our land. We started being political, blatantly political. They had taken the land from us without using any legal rules at all. It was a seizure by the settlers, settlers acting on the strength of a chatter given them by Queen Victoria. They got our land, occupied it by force, we are now going to take it by force, we did that? Yes, and we were entitled to do it as a government, the land is ours. They had refused to provide money for compensation.

Robert Mugabe:               The only course was for us to take our land back and say to them, "Fine, if your keep and keen want compensation, you give it to them, we can't give compensation to them because in the first place, those of the more acquired the land from us, didn't pay for it." That became now the issue, and Blair has tried to fight the issue from his side now using Europe as allies and say et cetera et cetera. But we said, "The land is ours, here we were born, here are ancestors lying in graves, here are progeny will find their existence, it is Zimbabwean soil, Zimbabwean land and must come to us."

Interviewer:                       Thank you Mr president. Let's take a short break, we'll be back in a short while, please don't go away. Thank you for joining us, we are having an interview with the president of Zimbabwe is excellently President Robert Mugabe. Why have most African countries failed to advance from political power to complete economic emancipation?

Robert Mugabe:               Well, for a number of reasons. One, although you got your political power, you did not inherit with it. [inaudible] means, be the people are poor, the people are illiterate. How do you get development to take effect in those circumstances? You then must open yourselves up to investment from outside and investment from outside whilst it has the benefit of adding to your resources, a new resource by way of capital, has also the disadvantage of control by foreigners, so that is that. In our own formerly colonised countries, ourselves, South Africa, Mozambique-

Interviewer:                       Namibia.

Robert Mugabe:               Namibia, we have to grapple with control by settlers, we may not look at issues in the same way as you do, their objective might just be self aggrandisement. In other words, they want to enrich themselves the whole way through, their objectives that you have in regard to enlightenment, raising of the literacy rate and eradicating disease and creating a social environment where people interact and therefore benefit by that interaction, these are not necessarily their objectives. So altruism doesn't exist on their part, the leadership has got to cause empowerment of the people in those circumstances.

Robert Mugabe:               We are glad in South Africa, there is that programme of empowerment, here we have it, they may call it indigenization but it's empowerment nevertheless. Here we have said the resource that comes first in the process of empowerment is that of land. If the people have their land and they are assisted in having the means with which to till that land, the fertilisers, inputs like seeds, et Cetera, tillage, they can become rich or at least improve their condition of wealth in a matter of a year or a season. You grow today, you sell tomorrow after three, four months, five months, six months and you have now some income.

Robert Mugabe:               So you have to build this process of enriching people by getting them to have incomes, and incomes in a country that is just got its independence. In my view, if it was like our country with land as a resource, good rains and a hardworking people, that country would then emphasise agriculture first and foremost. But it depends of course on the situation and on water, the natural resources that are yours maybe, but in our own environment here and indeed in most African environments, agriculture must come first.

Interviewer:                       Mr President, I want to add another dimension to this whole subject of the political independence and economic emancipation. By drawing parallels between Ghana after independence in the 60s and Zimbabwe today, when Okuma tried to set the economic emancipation of his people emotion through the integrated industrial project, the Volta River Project, the colonial powers stopped him in his tracks. Eventually, I mean, his government was overthrown in a plot that was hatched by the CIA with the assistance of Britain and France. Are there lessons from the past to be read?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes, sure.

Interviewer:                       Are there similarities?

Robert Mugabe:               Yeah, there're similarities, there is always on the part of our former colonisers and the perineal desire to retain control over us, and to manipulate our economies in their own interests to their own advantage. This is what happened in Ghana especially in the context of the bipolarity we had between capitalism and socialism or communism where it was feared that the newly developing countries will tend to gravitate towards socialism or communism rather than create an environmental capitalism, in other words, rather than continue the former colonial environment in which capitalism can thrive.

Robert Mugabe:               I happened to have been teaching in Ghana then, 1958, 59 to 60, and that was the height of Nkrumaism then, and Nkrumah was trying all this and I happen to have seen what Nkrumah was trying to do. Yes, he tried his best but he did not have united people. If there is no unity in the country and the people are divided, there are less progressive elements, in that scenario of division will tend to rely more on outsiders, and we have that situation here.

Interviewer:                       Yeah.

Robert Mugabe:               You can see what's happening here. Is precisely the same, as the same scenario as we found in Ghana.

Interviewer:                       I want to illustrate the point further Mr President, if you may indulge me, I want to refer to the American government documents which were declassified at the end of 1999, but recently made them public. The documents show that the American government started talking about Nkrumah's overthrow two full years before the actual event, and the strategy as the State Department asserted was and I want to quote from the documents again, "Intensive efforts should be made through psychological warfare and other means to diminish support for Nkrumah within Ghana, and nurture the conviction among the Ghanaian people that their country's welfare and independence necessitated his removal."

Robert Mugabe:               Sure.

Interviewer:                       The other point was crack the back of Ghana's economy and make her weak. Now I turn to Zimbabwe today. Are there any similarity?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes, yes. Oh yes. Quite an analogy that you have given us, and this is what they're trying to do, diminish support for the ruling party, the Liberation Movement, and then crack the back of the economy. Precisely what they are trying to do, except that now we are a little wiser having seen the experiences other countries have gone through, but of course they will always try coup d'etat in the end it was more their disaffection of the army that won the day for them and saw Nkrumah being overthrown. You have to rely therefore on the most loyal of your people, your forces.

Interviewer:                       When is the curtain finally coming down on the land redistribution programme?

Robert Mugabe:               It'll never come down. What will come down is the stage. Well, like in any drama, and you have the scenes of course and the acts. Act one, yes, the curtain will fall, act two is about development, but there will still be the elements from act one that will cease to new people, few though in number now wanting land. Of course, because we continue to get children and the new ones, the demand continues to grow. But it will not grow in that a geometrical way if you are just more arithmetical if you want to put it in mathematical terms, and this is what you get.

Robert Mugabe:               So we are now at a stage where most of the people got the land, but we still have a substantial number of those who have not been resettled here and there. We have the A1 and A2, A1 aims at giving homes, residential places with the areas to farm, areas to graze and the areas for the home, that's the A1 and definite chief and definite traditional leaderships. A2 is about making money, land for making money, commercial land, and this is the one which is not yet as complete as A1 and we will proceed with it, but the demand will not be as great as it was in the past.

Robert Mugabe:               But the demand that we are going to face now is developmental inputs, how can we afford inputs? Make people economically wealthy, let them derive now wealth from the land that they have, this is now the issue, the development of the land in order to benefit the land user and indeed the owner.

Interviewer:                       The criticism on the land issue that land is given only to your cronies and not to the landless majority.

Robert Mugabe:               Who believes that, as who would believe that? How do I really give land to just my cronies when the majority of the people are in the country. We only know their identity, political identity when we need and when we have rallies, they are a mixture of all tribes, religions that is background, political persuasions and so on and so forth. You can go into the rural area to people under a chief and say only those of ZANU must be given land. Those who belong to the MDC or don't belong to any party any either of these parties should not get any land. We do not have time for that. The chiefs had their own lists everywhere, anyone who needed land gave his name or the name of his own son or daughter, and this is what happened, that's how we have given land. Is there people who have been denied?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes, members of [inaudible] Welshman Ncube has got a farm and there are others still, with farms. The schools we ran, the education we give, do we discriminate? I ran a programme, a 40-year programme of students in order to ... for sentimental reasons and for good reasons also, historical to keep us in touch with what we just produced, you will not a good many leaders for our country and to keep intact. Yes, and the continent. So I run scholarship, there you have Tsvangirai boy there, he is there.

Interviewer:                       He benefits from them?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes, yes, yes he benefits from the programme, it's a government programme, these scholarships are given by the government and we just look at the results and then the recommendations that are made by the governors in the various provinces and we give them that. No, I think this is just to try and demean the programme and try to demolish it. But of course it's beyond the stage where demolitions of it can take place, it's actually now well rooted, well grafted.

Interviewer:                       Let's look at the economy, Mr Precedent. Some say you have mismanaged the economy and they talk about the chronic shortage of fuel, food and the high inflation rate. What is your response to that?

Robert Mugabe:               Of course, I will say that's nonsense, absolute nonsense. Yes, we are going through difficulties, and mainly because of two factors, two elements. One, the phenomenon of drought and drought coming in succession, where cyclone lead, which devastated our country, part of our country. Then we had droughts two years in succession, even last year we had a drought up to December for the rain started falling well in January. Then of course you ... Well, our country, the economy relying more on agriculture. Factories or agricultural based by and large and so if agriculture fails then of course it undermines, that failure undermines also the manufacturing sector.

Robert Mugabe:               Then of course the sanctions, the sanctions that have been imposed, although they said the sanctions that have been imposed on us are personal sanctions, the travel sanctions and so on. That's not telling the truth. The British have not wanted to fund the programmes they were funding earlier on, the Americans have withdrawn their funding, and there has been an appeal to the various of our donors by Britain broad daylight, and it's against the international rules, but they have done it, gone to various countries in the European Union to say, funds should not be given to Zimbabwe to strengthen the regime of Mugabe which, is dictatorial and so on.

Robert Mugabe:               There's been this withdrawal of funds, but we have managed, the wonder is actually that we are managed to this day to be on our feet, and there won't come a day when we will really say, "Ah, now we are gone, we have collapsed, we are dead people." Never, as long as we have our land, and as long as we are simple in our needs we will survive. We survived during the struggles we were eating very little in some cases, actually eating fruits in the forest [inaudible] war veterans, but we managed and our people were headed into [inaudible] it was difficult times we had. The times we have now, difficult though they are not comparable to the times of people went through as the liberation struggle was being fought with sanctions on Smith, the situation is much better.

Robert Mugabe:               If you look at what has happened, over years through our educational system, we have empowered our people and young people have developed to the level where they are millionaires now in the financial sector, the economic sector, there many rich people here, but it is the majority of the people at the bottom and it's continues to be the peasants who are having a raw deal at the moment. The peasants will still continue in spite of the hardships to support the party, the party which liberated them. We never depended on the sugar people in the urban areas, for our struggle it was these people [inaudible] who believed that the struggle had to do with their regaining their land who supported us right through.

Robert Mugabe:               That's the difference between our struggle and your struggle, in respect of your struggle, it is the urban people who played a part, because of course after 300 years you are more highly industrialised than ourselves. But here, no, it's the minority are in the urban areas, the majority in rural areas and these are the people we depend on. But for that matter, as Zimbabwean in Harare or Bulawayo or Gweru will not never tell you that his home is in those places, no, he always points to his home being in Gutu, Buhera, Gwanda et cetera. That is because we are not yet as industrialised as yourselves as other ... that will come later.

Interviewer:                       Of concern is the inflation rate rising up to 269%. I mean why has the Reserve Bank allowed the situation to get out of hand? I mean, the Reserve bank governor-

Robert Mugabe:               I must admit there, that we have situation, economies and these highly educated experts on finance and so on, who think a situation troubled as it is must be handled or addressed in the same way as a normal situation. To them, there is no real hardship here that demands that they change their rules. So they stick to bookish rules and bookish norms of handling the economic situation. We are in a state of emergency, we have said this, actually state of war and in state of war you've got to use measures that address the situation looking at the vital points that need to be addressed. Well, we have allowed them to go about it that way, but we are going to overhaul the system soon.

Interviewer:                       Zimbabwe this week has seen the final push call been made by the opposition. Has that been effective?

Robert Mugabe:               I don't know what they meant by describing it as the final push. The final push has failed totally. If it was a meant to be a push at all, it has not been a push of the government meant to create a room for Tsvangirai to takeover. On the contrary, it has been a push in reverse. So who has pushed who? That is the question we want to be answered. It was of course erroneously in the extreme to think that the opposition could come together, organise people illegally and get them to push the government out. Of course that was an illusion, completely illusion.

Robert Mugabe:               Unless that they knew it was not going to be a push but just a matter of doing something that would receive the attention of the G8. It was just some drama for the G8 that they wanted, but the drama in which the main characters have failed to impress anyone.

Interviewer:                       Hasn't this though provided on an opportunity to see how the government could engage the opposition party and other stakeholders in the country meaningfully and find a way of resolving the problems that Zimbabwe is facing?

Robert Mugabe:               We are open. We have expressed ourselves as desirous actually of dialogue, but it must be meaningful dialogue. You can dialogue on issues that are still pending in court and requiring the decision of the court. They have gone to court and we have said, “Either you withdraw the case in courts regarding the legitimacy of my government, legitimacy of myself or you wait until the court has decided on the issues that you have placed before the judges.” So you can't have it both ways. We are saying dialogue, yes. But you dialogue about what? With people who do not recognise that you're legitimate?

Interviewer:                       If the court cases were withdrawn then you think a dialogue would actually start?

Robert Mugabe:               Yeah, yeah, sure. We said yes we'll start dialogue. We can talk to anybody who can talk to the MDC any time, we are not afraid to talk. Mind you, we have had a history of dialogue in this country. There was a time in 1982, 83 when the ZANU ZAPU were in conflict with each other, but we were dialoguing all the time until in 1987, by 87 we had the Unity Accord between ZANU-PF, between ZANU and ZAPU and now we have ZANU-PF and we are united which is very good. We dialogue, yes, we dialogue with even the religious groups, and would want to assure them that now there is the need for us to keep the church and state together, working together.

Robert Mugabe:               We dialogue with the traditional leaders, we dialogue with any other groups, the women for example, the gender issues, we've been dialoguing with them regardless of the parties to which they belong. Why should we not dialogue with Tsvangirai? But you see, they want to dialogue with Blair and the English, dialogue with the Americans, dialogue with outsiders against their own government. Do not look at the need for the Zimbabweans themselves to dialogue with each other in a realistic way, in order to get a solution to their problem. If we need a new constitution, well, as indeed it was said before the year 2000, that a new constitution was necessarily for the country. We dialogued, when we agreed to have a referendum, they rejected it, the draught constitution that was presented to the nation.

Robert Mugabe:               But if they want a similar dialogue, we can have it, there is nothing wrong about it. But dialoguing of course, should not be between parties, one of which is holding an axe to put it our African log stems. One holding an axe over you or spear towards you or holding a gun, pointing a gun at you, no, it must be dialogue of persons who believe that they belong ... that common belonging to the country. Therefore would want to see a solution evolve through dialogue that can satisfy all the parties. We are open, yes, on that one, certainly, and we remain open. We have said so to our mediators, president Obasanjo and president Mbeki, and they've been helping us immensely on this subject.

Robert Mugabe:               But of course the appeal to the MDC, not to resort to mass action, not to result to violence has not yielded fruit, but we ask them to continue to appeal to them. It's sad when we are forced as a government to have to use tear gas against our own youth who are being misled. But we have to do it in the interests of peace and security, but we don't want to make our people suffer. We suffered enough during colonial times and during independence, we want our people to be free, express their free views and feel that the country belongs to them, that they have a stake like everybody else in the country.

Interviewer:                       Finally, Mr President, next year you will be turning 80.

Robert Mugabe:               Yes.

Interviewer:                       What are your immediate future plans?

Robert Mugabe:               Yes. As I get younger and younger, and I also get the ambition, the ambition to retire, I don't know when it will come. I don't want to retire in a situation where people are disunited where certain of our objectives will not have been achieved, and retire against the background of division, no. That's why I've said the succession issues should be discussed in harmonious way openly and ... if it points the way forward, well and good. But if it's going to go cause division as it's tending to do at the moment, then one says no to it.

Robert Mugabe:               However, the choice is right of the people, I was chosen last year, elected last year, and it would be nonsensical for me a year after being elected to resign, the peoples will say, "Ah, why put us to all these much I'll do and much I do about nothing, and there you're going." People suggest the background of these attacks, these pressures from the British, the British should let us free, reframe from exerting pressures and the Americans with them do the same. But as long as there is that fight, I am for the fight, I'm getting younger as I told you, and I still can punch.