Robert Mugabe: Quotes about people

“He imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Yes, he imprisons even here in the United States, with his jails carrying more blacks than his universities can ever enroll. He even suspends the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Take Guantanamo for example; at that concentration camp international law does not apply. The national laws of the people there do not apply. Laws of the United States of America do not apply. Only Bush's law applies. Can the international community accept being lectured by this man on the provisions of the universal declaration of human rights? Definitely not!”

Robert Mugabe

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (26 September 2007)
2000s, 2005 - 2009

People , Secret , Law , Communication

“Let Blair and the British government take note and listen. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. Our people are overjoyed. The land is ours. We are now the rulers and owners of Zimbabwe.”

Robert Mugabe

Michael White, Andrew Meldrum, "Commonwealth leaders delay decision on defiant Mugabe", The Guardian, 6 December 2003, p. 2.
Speech to ZANU-PF Congress, 5 December 2003.
2000s, 2000-2004

People

“Mr Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.”

Robert Mugabe

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly (26 September 2007)
2000s, 2005 - 2009

God , People , Sense

“Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins.”

Robert Mugabe

Martin Meredith, "Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe".
Said in 1976 while a leading commander of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army
1970s

People

“I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”

Robert Mugabe

Speech at the state funeral of a Cabinet minister, March 2003. Quoted in ['Hitler' Mugabe launches revenge terror attacks, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/1425727/Hitler-Mugabe-launches-revenge-terror-attacks.html, Peta, Thornycroft, Daily Telegraph, London, 26 March 2003, 5 August 2013]
2000s, 2000-2004

People , Justice , Time

“We cannot have a situation where people decide to sit in places not allowed and when police remove them they say no. We can’t have that. That is a revolt to the system. Some are crying that they were beaten. Yes you will be thoroughly beaten. When the police say move you move. If you don’t move, you invite the police to use force.”

Robert Mugabe

Addressing delegates at the Zimbabwe embassy in Cairo, Egypt, on the arrest, torture and mistreatment of 15 trade union activists in Zimbabwe, 23 September 2006.
2000s, 2005 - 2009

People , Cry

“If the choice was made for us, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or to remain with our sovereignty and lose membership of the Commonwealth, then I would say, then let the Commonwealth go. What is it to us? Our people are overjoyed, the land is ours. We are now the rulers and owners of Zimbabwe.”

Robert Mugabe

ibid.
2000s, 2000-2004

People

“We are totally opposed to the concept of multi-racialism because it assumes in the first instance that people have got to be arranged in compartments based on colour… you have Europeans in one compartment, Asians and coloureds in two other compartments and Africans in another compartment… And immediately you talk of multi-racialism, you are accepting as a starting point that the races are different and this difference must be recognised. We are non-racialist in our approach and that everybody must be accorded his full political rights – whether he white or black, educated or uneducated, rich or poor. And this is why we are at the moment struggling to earn for our people one-man-one-vote.”

Robert Mugabe

In 1961, as quoted in "WATCH: 'Fascinating' video of Mugabe talking 'non-racialism' like Mandela goes viral on social media" https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/watch-fascinating-video-of-mugabe-talking-non-racialism-like-mandela-20170916 (16 September 2017), News24, South Africa
1960s

Education , People