Mugabe calls for Africa unity

Mugabe calls for Africa unity

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By Susan Njanji

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, under fire at home over a crumbling economy, said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire.

"To tell you the truth, until and unless we put our act together, organise and start pulling our resources together, we will never ever prosper from any aid from any source outside Africa," he told a rally on the fringes of an African Union (AU) summit in Accra.

About a thousand placard and flag waving Ghananians, many sporting T-shirts with the portrait of the 83-year old Mugabe, attended the rally at Kwameh Nkrumah Memorial Park in the Ghanian capital.

"We must unite, not just politically but economically," the Zimbabwean leader told a cheering crowd in the city hosting a twice yearly meeting of African heads of state.

The three day summit has been billed by some as an opportunity to forge a so-called United States of Africa, with Libya's Moammar Gadaffi calling for a common defence and foreign policy.

"Although there is the umbrella of unity, but within this unity we are not united," he said.

Punctuating his speech with a reference to Ghana's revered architect of pan-Africanism, Mugabe said today's Africa is lacking the vision Nkrumah outlined in 1963 when the predecessor body of the AU, the Organisation of African Union was formed.

"Nkrumah wanted the creation of a United States of Africa in 1963, but others said it was too early, and 44 years later, others are still saying we are not ready," he said.

"We are producers of oil, but look at what is happening, mismanagement and corruption. We must correct this," said Mugabe in a country which is soon to join the club of Africa's oil producers after a British firm last month announced the discovery of oil off Ghana's shore.

"If we were to organise ourselves in a unified form, in a united way, we would certainly emerge as a prosperous continent," he said as his country is reeling from a world record annual inflation rate of more than 4 000 percent and food shortages.

Mugabe did not mention the crisis at home, but instead went into details of how his country was pushed to the edge and seized land from white Zimbabweans on grounds that the colonial ruler, Britain had reneged on its pledges to pay for a land-reform scheme.

Mugabe also took a swipe at the United States President George Bush and Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, over the Iraq war.

"These are the two people who have spoiled our world. And now they come up with all kinds of things, saying they will help Africa," he said. - Reuters
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