Reports that thousands homeless after government's clean-up program

"Nonsense!"Robert Mugabe said in an ABC News interview.

"That's nonsense... anyone who wants facts should come and see what's happening. We removed them from slums and put them in new places."
"Obviously when you destroy slums, even as you prepare new places for them, there is a dislocation, disorganization of the family for that moment."

"Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands. You go there now and see whether those thousands are there... Where are they? A figment of their imagination. They exaggerated."

Questioned about Retirement

Mugabe in an interview with ABC saying that he would remain in charge of the country, even after he leaves office.

"I'll still be in the party," he said. "The party is greater than government, by the way, and my being president of the party is similar to my being president of the country."

2004 May

Talking about efforts by international food agencies to get food to his starving population, in an interview with Sky TV.

"Why foist this food upon us? We do not want to be choked, we have enough."

Dialogue between MDC and ZANU-PF? Never!

2003 August: "Those who seek unity must not be our enemies. No, we say no to them, they must first repent... they must first be together with us, speak the same language with us, act like us, walk alike and dream alike."

2003 June: "Let the MDC and its leadership be warned that those who play with fire will not only be burnt, but consumed by that fire."

2004 February: "We cannot discuss with allies of the West. The devil is the devil and we have no idea of supping with the devil"

Cementing his Dictatorship

2002 December: At the annual conference of his ruling party, Zanu-PF, referring to white commercial farmers who resisted his land reform scheme
"We saw who they were, what they were and we realised we had nurtured enemies among us, so we started treating them as enemies, enemies of our government, enemies of our party, enemies of our people."

2002 December: At the annual conference of his ruling party, Zanu-PF, referring to western countries (Bush and Blair)
"The more they work against us... the more negative we shall become to their kith and kin here."

2003 March: In a speech at funeral of Dr Swithun Mombeshora
"This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources… If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold."

2003 December: At the ZANU-PF annual conference
"If they (the MDC) want to violate the laws of the country, we can unleash legal force and legal violence, which we are permitted to do. [...] Some measures of force must be used to restrain them."

2002 - Parlimentary Elections

February: "We are in a war to defend our rights and the interests of our people. The British have decided to take us on through the MDC."

March: "All of you gathered here can see that whites want us to be their slaves and they are now closing shops and factories to throw you blacks into the streets so that you can turn against the government."

In a speech celebrating his re-inauguration and clarifying his policy towards the opposition MDC: "We will make them run. If they have not run before we will make them run now…. We will not pander to them any longer. That is gone. It is finished. We are now entering a new chapter, and there will be firm government, very firm government…."

2001 - Land Reform Program Intensifies

In a televised speech: "Violence is not just happening, it in fact has been deliberately hatched at the center of the MDC and by its patrons and principals overseas... This is a real physical fight and we have to prepare for it."

In an interview marking his 77th birthday: "I would like to [retire], sure. As long as I am assured that those we fought yesterday are thoroughly beaten and that the carpet they now stand on, the economic carpet, has been removed from their feet and it has become our carpet."

Talking about white farmers arrested for refusing to move from their farms: "They will not be treated like special creatures. Why should they be treated as if they are next to God? If anything, they are next to he who commands evil and resides in [the] inferno."

2000 June - Elections Approach

"The whites can be citizens in our country, or residents, but not our cousins. They are the greatest racists in the world."

Typical references to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition.
"A white man masquerading as a black" and "A tea boy for his white boss."

"Morgan Tsvangirai is an ambitious frog ... as long as Morgan will be used by the British he will be a frog."

BBC interview with David Dimbleby - 26th June 2000
On whites in Zimbabwe

"We have not stopped singing to the theme of unity and the theme of love. Even the whites are free to live here. But they must change. Your kind - the British kind - are very difficult to change. We rate them as the most conceited, the most arrogant, the most selfish and the most racist in our situation."

"We ourselves should not ever... as government, as a party, as individuals within the party, be seen to be acting in a racist way, blacks against whites, we refuse to do that. The whites wouldn't be here if I was like that....we can't do things like that."

On his governments failure to uphold the law.

"The law of the land must also work for moral justice - if I lead the people on the land and then get time to bring about law and order then it is a far better proposition, a better approach than one which will pit the forces against the masses of people now occupying the land and there would be greater death greater bloodshed - this is just a little row of trespass."

"Elsewhere, those who commit murders are being arrested, those who commit robberies are being arrested, other crimes are being taken care of and there is greater law and order.
Only in the little area of trespass on the farms, where there has in fact been injustice all along by the farmers and if they suffer this very little - shall I say? - inconvenience of their land being occupied. And they suffer that very little inconvenience, against the inconvenience that we have suffered as a people for decades."

On the possibility of an opposition election victory.

"That probability should never be entertained. I can never concede that they have the capacity to win , in dreamland perhaps, yes, I could see them in power but when I get up I say that is a dream, never a reality. Why do you want us to talk about dreams now?"

"If Zanu-PF loses, we will not accept the results. We fought and died for this country and you cannot expect us to hand the country on a silver plate to some new party backed by the white man."

2000 - Land Reform Program

March: "Those who try to cause disunity among our people must watch out because death will befall them..."

May: "They have expressed their concern. What concern? We just want our land and will take it the way we know how. What can they do?"

Independence Day: "Our present state of mind is that you [white commercial farmers] are now our enemies because you really have behaved as enemies of Zimbabwe."

1999 April: In response to the IMF denying balance-of-payment support due to lack of transparency

"Let that monstrous creature get out of our way. Unless I am prevailed upon to see things otherwise [...] I will lead my government in the direction where we dismiss the IMF as an institution that we can relate to, and that is coming very soon."

1980 - Zimbabwean Independence

"If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and an ally with the same national interest, loyalty, rights, and duties as myself."

"It could never be a correct justification that, because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, that the blacks must oppress them today because they have power."

"If you were my enemy, you are now my friend. If you hated me, you cannot avoid the love that binds me to you and you to me."