Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa rounded on Western powers on Monday, saying Africans were tired of preaching by countries that denied them democratic rights in their colonial past.
Mkapa's strongly worded speech was interpreted as a show of support for Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe's controversial seizure of white-owned farms for landless blacks, a major focus of a Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit.
"We are tired of being lectured on democracy by the very countries which, under colonialism, either directly denied us the rights of free citizens, or were indifferent to our suffering and yearnings to break free and be democratic," Mkapa told fellow heads of state at the summit's opening ceremony.
"Let SADC speak with one voice, and let the outside world understand, that to us Africans land is much more than a factor of production, we are spiritually anchored in the lands of our ancestors," he said.
"To dispossess us of land is not only to consign us to perpetual economic deprivation. It is also an affront to our spirit."
Economic and political breakdown in Zimbabwe, which Mugabe's critics blame on his policies, are expected to be a major preoccupation at the two-day summit, being held at a beach resort on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
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