TALK SHOW host Dali Tambo has defended his interview with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe aired Sunday on SABC3.
Report by Tinotenda Samukange
Listen to the podcast below:
During the interview, which lasted two-and-a-half hours, the Zanu-PF leader claims that upcoming elections will be peaceful but does not sound like a man ready or willing to let go. Banging his fist on an armrest, he unleashes the old fiery rhetoric: “There is a fight to fight. The British are calling for regime change, that I must go. That call must not come from the British.
“The sanctions are still on us and what man is there who, when his own house is being attacked, will run away and leave the family and the children still under attack? It’s a coward … My people still need me and when people still need you to lead them it’s not time, sir, it doesn’t matter how old you are, to say goodbye.
They will say you are deserting us and I am not a deserter, never have been, I never have thought of deserting my people. We fight to the finish: that’s it. I still have it in me here.”
People of the South makes no mention of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and will do no harm to Mugabe’s attempts to rebrand himself, which have already led to signs of a softening in western opinion. Tambo, who grew up in exile in north London, said his show is “not Hardtalk” and he makes no apologies for humanising a man he believes has long been demonised.
Describing Mugabe as “warm, charismastic and very humorous”, he said: “I feel, honestly, a pride in that man and I think that he has been misunderstood and ill-judged by a lot of the press. He’s made mistakes but in general he’s going to go down in history with a very positive perspective from Africans.”The Guardian
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