Ousted Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. [Photo:File]He may go down as the world’s most outlandish leader, but 93-year-old Robert Mugabe made sure to leave tongues wagging with his colorful and often detestable language.
His public remarks have been so preposterous it is almost laughable, almost.
Many in Zimbabwe see him as a revolutionary hero comparing himself to rebels like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Fidel Castro but in the eyes of the West, he is a schemer, guilty of corruption, incompetent and a tyrant.
Not only has he compared himself to Jesus Christ and Hitler but he has previously delivered his outrageous assertions wearing clothes that would give the flashiest of grandfathers a run for their money.
Social media has gone bonkers over Mugabe’s careless utterances in public, so much so to even make memes out of some of his statements.
After Thursday’s takeover by the military in Zimbabwe, we list some of his most famous quotes even as the world awaits the next move.
On his 88th birthday, Mugabe was quoted on State Radio comparing himself to Jesus, “I have died many times – that’s where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once.”
At a state funeral of a cabinet minister in 2003, he publicly said “I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”
When Mugabe’s land reform was criticized for taking land belonging to White farmers he countered that, “The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. The white man is here as a second citizen. The only man you can trust is a dead white man.”
And when the controversy surrounding gay marriages began gaining momentum, Zimbabwe’s “thinking man’s guerilla” was at it again. This time, not without his fair share of a piece of his mind.
“If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads.”
“Girls, learn to take care of yourselves. Some men will use you, use your body, ruin your reputation and then marry a beautiful woman and get born again. And as if that is not enough, use you as testimony in church.”
On criticism, Mugabe once said “Only God, who appointed me, will remove me – not the MDC, not the British. Only God will remove me!”
Whatever you may think of the near-four-decade head of state, the man sure did not mince his words.
-standardmedia.co.ke
