Comment on Mugabe ‘disgraceful’

Press, 19 November 1981, Page 1

Comment on Mugabe ‘disgraceful’

NZPA staff correspondent Hamilton The latest comments by the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) on Zimbabwe’s leader, Mr Mugabe, were “stirring up difficulties for New Zealand internationally,” said Labour’s leader (Mr Rowling) yesterday. Mr Muldoon’s talkback radio comments blaming Mr Mugabe for the missile attack which shot down an unarmed Air Rhodesia Viscount aircraft during the Rhodesian civil war were “a disgraceful state of affairs,”: Mr Rowling said. “Stirring up difficulties for New Zealand internationally, and particularly within the Commonwealth, for some, short-term political gain in. the New Zealand election is about as weak a form' of politics as you can possibly get,” he said. The Government was not fighting the election on issues that mattered to New Zealanders but was trying to “rake up any darn thing under the sun, and it does not seem to matter too much what the truth of the thing is.” ■ The only result must be greater difficulties for New Zealand internationally. New Zealand had had to tolerate

such outbursts from the Prime Minister for too long, Mr Rowling said. At the time of the Viscount incident there was no official recognition of which guerrilla faction — Mr Mugabe’s or, that of his political rival, Mr Joshua Nkomo — shot down the aircraft carrying the Boyd family, of Glendowie, Auckland, in February, .1979. However, Mr Nkomo’s forces claimed, and were attributed with, bringing down another Viscount in September, 1978,. and the incident five months later was widely regarded as being the work of the Nkomo group, too. Mr Muldoon’s statement was “clearly without fact,” Mr Rowling said. Mr Muldoon’s comments followed, up his “running - round - the - jungle - shooting - people,” remarks about Mr Mugabe which caused a storm at the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Melbourne in October. At that time,..he said, his remarks, had not been meant to' be derogatory, and he told journalists that New Zealanders generally had the highest regard for Mr Mugabe, and the way he had overcome internal differences in Zimbabwe.