"De Beers has been swallowing, swallowing diamonds everywhere," said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, urging Africa's new generation of leaders to learn from the principles of the continent's freedom fighters who "decolonized" Africa.

Mugabe urged those present not to allow Westerners to continue to play the role of "mothers and grandmothers" to African nations, telling them what to do and what not to do. "That's what we are fighting, that's what Mugabe is fighting. Regime change, we say, no!" Mugabe declared.

Don't sell your freedom for assistance, the president urged young leaders. "Don't sell your freedom."

The president spoke at a ceremony in Namibia marking the 30th anniversary of the Southern African Development Community – formerly the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, formed in 1980 – at which he was honored along with Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding president of Zambia. The Zimbabwe leader told the attendees how southern African leaders had cooperated to liberate Zimbabwe, which in turn aided Namibia and South Africa by smuggling weapons and soldiers into those countries.

The West, Mugabe continued, had once dismissed Tanzania, which went on to become key to all liberation movements in southern Africa. The southern part of the continent was rich in natural resources, and African leaders, many of whose nations were turning into diamond suppliers, had the tools to determine their own destiny. There was no need, Mugabe stressed, to work in the interests of the West.

"God has given us greater vision, we have discovered gold… we have diamonds, and we are discovering uranium, platinum… why should we continue to bow to them?" he asked.

Mugabe urged SADC member nations to pool resources on finance development projects. Unless southern African nations returned to the unity that guided the anti-colonialism movement, he said, the countries would make them vulnerable to neo-colonialism, arguing that the West had attempted to interfere in diamond trade, which he attributed to the diamond industry's desire for "Anglo-American and De Beers to come and mine our diamonds."