Staff Reporter
President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday remembered the late Founding Father of Zimbabwe, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe, describing him as a principled man who never compromised on what was right and just for his people.
In a statement, commemorating the 2nd Anniversary of the former President’s passing, President Mnangagwa said the former President was known all over the world for his courage to stand up for his country and ethos.
“The founding father distinguished himself as a principled man who would never compromise on what was right and just for his people. Quite often he would remind us about what the late Kwame Nkrumah said about adherence to principle. He said, principle should never be sacrificed on the altar of expediency.
“Our inaugural President of the Republic taught us that right is might, challenging the great powers of the world that espoused the doctrine of might is right. Our late leader would always invoke one of the key tenants of the United Nations Charter which asserts the sovereign equality of all nations. Equally he would remind us and the world that Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans, and that the destiny of our nation lies in our own hands. Hence whatever we do we do it for ourselves as Zimbabweans and for nobody else,” said President Mnangagwa.
The President said the Land Reform Program which the late Founding Father pioneered has also contributed immensely to the Second Republic’s thrust to transform the economy through productivity.
“That is why the land reform he pioneered is irreversible. Sanctions or no sanctions he would not shy away from reminding the British, the land question was not negotiable. Hence in the Second Republic we are now focusing on productivity to underpin the speedy transformation of our economy including ensuring food security. Land is the economy and the economy is land as we repeatedly say,” he said.
The late former President Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In 1963, he and others founded ZANU, a resistance movement against British colonial rule.
He became Prime Minister of the new Republic of Zimbabwe after British rule ended in 1980, and he assumed the role of President seven years later, until his resignation in November 2017, at age 93. The late former President Mugabe died on September 6, 2019, at Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore where he was under observation for several months.
