ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe has denied there was any bad blood between him and former South African president Nelson Mandela, who died last Thursday, and described the late elderly statesman a "great friend" and "a man of real principle".
Mr Mugabe was among scores of world leaders who attended the memorial service for Mandela held at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Tuesday, and on Wednesday visited the Union Buildings in Pretoria to view Mandela’s body as it lay in state.
Mandela died aged 95 at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg.
"I don’t know about any feud," Mr Mugabe told reporters on his return to Harare. "If anything, there was an alliance. We worked very well with him when he came out of prison. We gave him support.
"We established the principle of national reconciliation at independence in 1980; they took it over and used it as a basis to create what they have now as the rainbow nation. There was no feud, where was the feud, what feud?"
He added: "But from our point of view, we have lost a great friend, a revolutionary and a man of real principle. That’s why we went to give him a send-off so that we would be satisfied that the love we had for him, the historical alliance that we created in the fight against imperialism and colonialism, will not have been historically lost by our being absent, and by not really being present to see this great man being given his eternal rest."
In depth: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 1918- 2013
News and views on the death, and life, of former president Nelson Mandela, with
tributes and photographsMr Mugabe’s comments echoed similar denials of any fallout between the two leaders, after media reports drawing comparisons of Mandela and Mr Mugabe elicited a sharp rebuke from Jonathan Moyo, a senior Zanu-PF official, earlier this week. Mr Moyo said such comparisons were a "waste of time".
Mr Mugabe, who turns 90 next February, is seen as a contemporary of Mandela, but remains in power and in July this year secured a seventh term in office — in stark contrast to Mandela, who served a single term and stepped down in 1999.
The Zimbabwean leader — received with applause on Tuesday at the Mandela memorial, amid booing for South African President Jacob Zuma — said he hoped Mandela’s legacy would continue to inspire South Africa and the rest of the continent.
"We do hope that what he stood for, the principles that he stood for, will be pursued in South Africa," he said. "And some of them are universal, of course, and Africa also will pursue them. We do hope that the situation in South Africa will continue with the peace and calm that Mandela created in 1994 when he came out of prison."
Mr Mugabe will not travel to Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, at the weekend for the burial. His Zanu (PF) party is holding a conference in Chinhoyi that kicked off on Thursday and will run into the weekend.
The conference, which comes against a backdrop of renewed infighting to succeed Mr Mugabe, will focus on the implementation of the party’s five-year economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation.
