| JOHANNESBURG--Robert
G. Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, used his turn
on the podium at the World Summit for Social Development
on Monday afternoon to defend his widely condemned
policy of ousting white farmers and distributing
their land to blacks-and he was enthusiastically
applauded. Mugabe told the assembled heads of state
that: "It has become starkly clear to us that
the failure of sustainable development is a direct
and necessary outcome of a neo-liberal model of development
propelled by runaway market forces that have been
defended in the name of globalization. ¼ This
has been a vicious, all-out assault on the poor
and their instruments of sustainable development." He
said sustainable development "is not possible
without agrarian reform that acknowledges, in our
case, that land comes first before all else, and
that all else grows from and off it."
"Inequitable access to land," he
said, "is at the heart of poverty,
food insecurity and lack of development
in Zimbabwe. ¼ This fundamental
question has pitted the black majority
who are the right-holders and, therefore,
primary stakeholders, to our land against
an obdurate and internationally well-connected
racial minority, largely of British descent
and brought in and sustained by British
colonialism."
"Economically," he continued, "we
are an occupied country 22 years after
our independence. Accordingly, my government
has decided to do the only right and
just thing by taking back land and giving
it to its rightful indigenous, black
owners, who lost it in circumstances
of colonial pillage. ¼We have
no apologies to make to anyone."
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