Tsvangirai urges sceptics to drop anti-Mugabe stance

In an impassioned appeal, Zimbabwe’s long-suffering Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai called for people to get over their obsession with his long-time enemy, President Robert Mugabe.

And he urged the millions who have abandoned the southern African nation to return to help rebuild its ruined economy.

Mr Tsvangirai, who has been beaten up and tortured by Mugabe’s thugs over the years, said victims of repression and the perpetrators of the crimes should reconcile.

He addressed exiled Zimbabweans in an audience at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, the first open forum Mr Tsvangirai has addressed since forming a unity government with Mr Mugabe in February, but the message also was intended for sceptical Western nations.

“Don’t be too paranoid about your obsession with Robert Mugabe because he isn’t going to go away, he is there,” Mr Tsvangirai said.

“Robert Mugabe was part of the problem but he is also part of the solution, whether you like it or not.”

He was responding to a man who declared, to applause, that Mr Mugabe “has almost single-handedly destroyed the country, lost two elections and yet is still there ... Why do you have to sleep with the enemy? Is not the simple solution that Mugabe goes?”

Mr Tsvangirai said an independent land commission must be set up to redistribute land.

When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, after a guerrilla war to end white supremacist rule, some 4,500 farmers owned two-thirds of the richest land.

“Land is an unfinished national agenda which means that until it is resolved ... it will continue to be an emerging issue every time there is conflict,” Mr Tsvangirai said.

“Don’t continue to be stewing in your own hatred,” he urged his people. “Zimbabweans must never forget that if we do not reconcile and rebuild and look to the future, this country will be forever trapped in this history of tribal violence, of political violence.”