‘Well Done,’ Mugabe Tells Americans

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, speaking for the black front-line states around South Africa, commended the Senate on Thursday for overriding President Reagan’s veto of sanctions against the white-minority regime and added, “I say ‘well done’ to the people of the United States.”

Mugabe spoke forcefully of his country’s willingness to endure the effects of U.S. sanctions against the Pretoria government and of Pretoria’s possible countermeasures against black African neighbors. As a major trading partner of South Africa, he conceded that his country could suffer economic damage if Pretoria retaliates.

But, he said, “South Africa is more dependent on us than we are on them. South Africa has heavy investments in Zimbabwe and receives dividends. . . . But if worse comes to worst, we could nationalize” the South African-held companies.

Mugabe said his government pays about $70 million in pensions to former government employees living in South Africa and “we can save on that as well.”

South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha warned Wednesday that, if Reagan’s veto were not sustained by Congress, his government would halt all grain purchases from the United States and block food shipments to his nation’s black neighbors as well.

Transport Threatened

Already threatened, Mugabe said, are Zimbabwe’s shipping routes through South Africa and through Mozambique, where, he charged, Pretoria is aiding guerrillas who sabotage rail lines.

But Mugabe said that regardless of whether South Africa retaliates against its neighbors, sanctions such as those enacted by Congress are a good idea. “These are things that must be done, even if it means eating sadza, “ he said, referring to a corn meal mush that is a staple of rural Zimbabwe.

Mugabe also attacked Reagan’s rejection of an invitation to meet with the prime ministers of the front-line states.

“Here is a man who does not want to confer with us on issues in which his government has been engaged in a process called constructive engagement,” Mugabe said. “If the President refused to meet with us, he obviously doesn’t want to know our views. He’s probably afraid of the truth.”

Shultz Meets Africans

Secretary of State George P. Shultz met Thursday with the foreign ministers of the six front-line states--Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania--at a luncheon honoring the new president of the Organization of African Unity, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, president of the Congo Republic.

At a private conference with Sassou-Nguesso, Shultz delivered what he called a “warm letter of congratulations” from Reagan.

“Our message to all the people of southern Africa is that there is a firm commitment in the United States to work for a new South Africa in which all her people can participate fully in a democratic political process,” Shultz told his guests.

But a senior State Department official told reporters that both at the luncheon and throughout a series of meetings with African foreign ministers during the day, Shultz emphasized that sanctions “deflected attention from the real objectives of the elimination of apartheid and repression in South Africa.”

The official conceded, however, that the Africans told Shultz that the time for patience is past and they support U.S. sanctions against Pretoria.