Zim leader ‘like Stalin’

Cape Town – Nobel laureate and Northern Ireland politician David Trimble drew parallels last night between the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe.

Mr Trimble told the Cape Town press club what was really needed to ensure sustainable development in the developing world was stable, responsible government.

“There is only so much that can be done in terms of aid. At the end of the day it really has to be peoples themselves that address their own particular circumstances and problems.”

On Zimbabwe, he said: “We are seeing not too far from here a famine developing which is not natural, but is largely man-made. It seems to borrow not a little from the tactics of Stalin in the Ukraine in the 1930s. It’s getting as bad as that.”

Early in Stalin’s reign the Soviet leader imposed a system of “collectivisation” whereby all privately held land in Ukraine was nationalised. The system was ultimately blamed for the deaths of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33. – Sapa

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