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Cape Town – The African Union (AU) chairperson, President Robert Mugabe has urged the bloc to ensure a "free" and "independent" Africa through the mobilisation of "local" resources to fund its own operations, a report says.
According to The Herald, Mugabe, who is also Zimbabwe's president, said the AU must stick to its original principles - agreed upon when it was formed in 1963. He said the bloc should desist from depending on Western donor funds.
"We are leaders of the AU... [but] we are receding from our principles. We have lost the path and direction laid down by our founding fathers... We have become beggars again." Mugabe was quoted as saying.
Africa's problems
Donors, according to the report, fund over 70% of AU's budget.
Mugabe's remarks come a few weeks after he accused the West of causing many of Africa's problems, urging Africans to "build resistance against them".
Mugabe, according to a Chronicle report said the West wanted regime change in several African states, including Zimbabwe.
"They [West] want things done their own way... They want regime change in Zimbabwe. They want me to go, them and not my people," Mugabe was quoted as saying.
Mugabe took over the post of AU chairperson in January, replacing Mauritania's president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980 and has frequently clashed with the West.
