Felex Share in Binga
The First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe yesterday castigated Britain and the United States’ hypocritical behaviour, saying the two Western countries are taking the killing of Cecil the Lion as more important than the horrendous murders they committed in Zimbabwe.
Speaking in Binga during a tour of projects in the area, Dr Mugabe said while Zimbabweans should jealously guard their wildlife and natural resources, the West should respect that the country is a sovereign State, able to shape its own destiny.
Cecil the Lion was killed last month by an American dentist Walter James Palmer at Hwange National Park and the illegal act drew worldwide outrage.
“These are hypocrites, crying about Cecil, a lion,” Amai Mugabe said. “Does a lion have equal rights with me? In the 1890s those who rebelled against the white settler regime like Mbuya Nehanda, Mashayamombe, Sekuru Kaguvi were beheaded and their skulls were taken to Britain.
“What kind of behaviour is that? It is disgusting that you come and behead someone and make his head a trophy, going with it to show the Queen just like what they did to our Cecil (the Lion).”
She added: “Yes, we want to protect our wildlife, but its baffling they start talking about Cecil’s head without talking about the skulls of our ancestors which they took.”
Britain is displaying skulls of some of Zimbabwe’s heroes and heroines of the First Chimurenga in their museums as symbols of colonial conquest and has since invited Zimbabwe to repatriate the remains.
This drew the ire of President Mugabe who this week said Government would collect the skulls begrudgingly and bury them at the country’s sacred shrines.
Amai Mugabe said the West would never dictate anything to Zimbabwe again as the country was a sovereign State.
“Their first offence to us is taking the skulls and Cecil the Lion later because they consider us as empty headed people,” she said.
“We love our animals and we do not like those who come to kill them, but what is more important: a person or an animal?
“Kuuya kuzovhima munhu, vapedza vovhima mhuka. We do not want people who underestimate us to that extent. They should know that when they are here they are visitors and cannot rule or dictate anything to us.”
No human being, Amai Mugabe said, was more important than the other.
“We did not get Independence to walk with them in the pavements and share toilets,” she said.
“That is nothing to us. We need land to call our own. Let us jealously guard our Independence such that the colonisers will never come and take our land again. This is our heritage and no one is superior to the other.”
She said the MDC-T’s dream of reversing the gains of the liberation struggle would never succeed.