'We want a clean partnership with Asian countries'

'We want a clean partnership with Asian countries'

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is one of the oldest and
longest serving leaders taking part in the Asian-African Summit.
This being his fifth visit to Indonesia, Mugabe used his time
here to open Zimbabwe's embassy building in the Patra Kuningan
district on Thursday. He also took the time to meet The Jakarta
Post's Endy M. Bayuni and Veeramalla Anjaiah to talk about his
expectations of the summit and how his Look East policy ties in
with the New Asia-Africa Strategic Partnership. The following are
excerpts from the interview:

What do you expect to come out of this summit, and how do you
compare this with the 1955 Bandung conference?

After Bandung, a lot of things happened. We had the Non-
Aligned Movement as a child of an initiative of the Afro-Asian
solidarity, and we continued to work with the solidarity in
getting countries in southern Africa, if not the whole of Africa,
independent.

Now, 50 years later, the scene has changed completely.
Countries that were not independent are now independent.
Colonialism has died politically in many countries. So, most
African countries now are in a position to effectively relate to
Asian countries through this solidarity. This is also true of
Asian countries. There is now greater room politically,
economically, socially, culturally and technically to interact
with each other.

Anything specific you would like to see in this summit?

The fact that we have new threats -- it is absolutely
necessary now for the Afro-Asian movement to create a solidarity
that would enable it to ward off acts of aggression that come out
of the unilateralism that we see happening.

Our eyes today are drawn into the one country in the Middle
East, which has been aggressed by Western forces of imperialism
for no reason other than the fact that they want to bring that
country under their control and its resources into their
ownership. I am specifically referring to the unjustified attack
on Iraq. What happened in Iraq could happen elsewhere.

What do you want this summit to do about such acts of
aggression?

I have not come here to do the innocuous things like passing
resolutions with no effect. We in Africa, my own country for
example, are also being threatened by the new colonialism of
Britain. What does this solidarity want to do with things of this
nature?

I expect a solidarity that enables us to defend politically --
that enables us to have a world body, the United Nations, that
can withstand these acts of aggression and the violations of the
UN charter.

And we come here saying nothing about these things -- what are
we doing?

What about the strategic partnership this summit is pushing
for?

This is very important to us in Zimbabwe. We have developed
this Look East policy because Asia is where people like us,
people who have had the same history of colonialism -- people who
have started developing their economies and are more advanced
than us in Africa. Relations with them in the context of
aspirations of solidarity will be reciprocally rewarded, and I
think we should emphasize that aspect of economic cooperation,
trading with each other.

Is such a partnership feasible?

Yes, extremely so. There must be a give-and-take exercise. You
look at areas where you are agreed, and develop areas where there
are differences, and you try to see how those differences can be
allayed through negotiations, through constant interactions. You
will always find a way through dialog. But there must be constant
meetings, and we must practice some of our resolutions taking
shape.

There seems to have been a big change in Zimbabwe's foreign
policy away from the West?

The relations with Europe were not of our own making. We were
occupied and it was by virtue of occupation that our economies
found themselves being exploited for the benefit of the West. We
have had Western multinational enterprises coming into our
countries, creating a root, deepening themselves in our mining
and agriculture sectors, and our land was being taken. In 1980,
we had political independence but not economic independence. Many
countries are not economically independent because they are being
exploited by the West.

We are now acquiring our land, we are entering the mining and
other sectors and this ensures that there is empowerment of our
people. If we realize this, it is absolutely necessary for us to
interact with other countries, including the West.

We want partnership based on equity, equality, and
reciprocity, and not of the colonial type where we become mere
workers. Now we operate and own these enterprises. We want to
have a clean partnership, not the dirty ones we have at the
moment.

We feel also that during the period we were fighting for our
liberation, support came from the East, from China; there was a
lot of political and diplomatic support from the United Nations,
India and other countries.

Countries like Asia, including Indonesia, were also under
colonialism once upon a time. They got free and independent much
earlier than us, therefore they have had a longer period of
independence during which they have improved themselves. So you
have the so-called Eastern Tigers now, they won't bite us and
they will accommodate us I am sure.