He started his speech by giving a long history of Mugabe and the ANC, saying they learnt a lot from him like keeping army and police generals of the old order and allowing them to quietly disappear from the scene rather than forcing them out.

He said that would have caused instability.

As expected, Mbeki gave a lecture on the land question that threw Zimbabwe into an economic and social crisis. He blamed Britain under Tony Blair for reneging on the deal.

He said attempts were made to buy some farms for war veterans who had started occupying the farms around 1998.

He said some unnamed donors gave them money to buy some farms that were on the market but the programme failed when it was taken over by the United Nations under Kofi Annan.

Source: LoI