President Robert Mugabe says he is not a rotten thinker. He is a complete Zimbabwean and urged Zimbabweans to be proud of their heritage and to have a sense of entitlement to their resources so that they could develop their own country..
Speaking at the Great Zimbabwe University after being conferred an honorary Doctor of African Heritage and Philosophy, Mugabe said the honorary degree had a very special meaning to him because he felt that he was misunderstood right up from independence because the British claimed he thought like them.
“They said publicly in the 1980s that the problem with Mugabe is that he thinks like us, goodness me! How can I think like them? I will be a rotten thinker to think like them. They even do not want to say that they themselves think like Africans. No! They want to say Africans think like them,” Mugabe said according to The Herald.
“They think their right is to rob others of their resources. I don’t think like them. I am not British. I am not a colonial product because I am a complete Zimbabwean, an African who does not think like the British. I think that Africans are entitled to sovereign control over their resources and have the right to shape their own future.”
Mugabe said Zimbabweans should use their unique identity and skills to engender development.
“Let us use Zimbabwean skills, let us be proud to be Zimbabweans, wherever you are, speak as a Zimbabwean and remain true to yourself as an individual as you, you, you, you, who is different from them. Act as an individual who has his or her own skills nurtured by circumstances as a Zimbabwean.
“All of you as Zimbabweans must have that common identity that makes you believe that you are entitled to the environment around you and its contents, those contents of the environment, the resources, the riches, you have got the sovereign right to control them because of that common identity and sense of belonging and you have got the right to fight for that which is God-given.”
He said there was a strong link between culture and development.
“As government, we are fully aware that the goals we have set for ourselves in Zim-Asset cannot be properly and fully realised unless as a nation we are firmly grounded in our culture and heritage. For us, Africanness is founded on Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy to which we must commit ourselves and in everything that we do.”
The Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) is the government’s proposed economic plan for the period up to December 2018. It covers four clusters: food security and nutrition, social services and poverty reduction, infrastructure and utilities and value addition and beneficiation.
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