Amin ‘Hitler of Africa’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 5

Amin ‘Hitler of Africa’

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON. ! President Idi Amin of Uganda was the “Hitler of Africa,” said the Zambian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mr Mwaanga) in Wellington: on Monday evening. “Amin is a tragedy for; Africa,” he told a meeting of the Institute of International Affairs. Mr Mwaanga, aged 35, is on an official visit to New

Zealand. He is a former! Zambian Ambassador to Moscow, and former editor of the "Zambian Times.” He began his poltical career as secretary of the Zambian Mine Workers’ Union. Mr Mwaanga said his coun-: try did not have diplomatic; relations with Uganda “because we don’t really think very much of Idi.” “He has a direct telephone to God which we don't have.”! Mr Mwaanga said he' wished the Western press would stop treating President; Amin with amusement and report events in Uganda as a | tragedy. Asked how Zambia could criticise South Africa’s apartheid policy, yet tolerate President Amin’s policies, Mr Mwaanga said that unfortunately the Ugandan situation was regarded bv the Organisation for African Unity as an internal affair. “Our views may not be; shared by the 0.A.U.,” he said.

Answering a question from the chairman of the Halt All Racist Tours organisation (Mr T. L. Richards) about the effect of New Zealand’s attitudes on sport with South Africa, Mr Mwaanga said New Zealand’s attitude was much appreciated. It gave Africans in South Africa a basis for complaint against apartheid, and support for their struggle for equal rights. Zambia believed that the South African Government must take immediate steps to abandon its policy heid and adopt a more human policy.

This policy would give the people of South Africa as a whole the right of shaping their destiny. Zambia’s relations with South Africa were those of “detente” which his country regarded as a diffusion of tension, Mr Mwaanga said. RHODESIA Asked if his Government would support “terrorist" groups in Rhodesia and South Africa, Mr Mwaanga said the biggest terrorist in the region was Mr lan Smith. Zambia was trying to deal with oppression in Rhodesia and South Africa politically, but this could not go on indefinitely. If peace was not achieved, conflicts between the rulers and liberation movements would increase. Zambia would have to support the movements for liberation, he said.