Harare. Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has called British Prime Minister David Cameron “satanic” for his support of gay rights, in a speech railing at Western influence in the country, state media said yesterday.
“It becomes worse and satanic when you get a prime minister like Cameron saying countries that want British aid should accept homosexuality,” Mugabe said Wednesday, according to the state-run Herald newspaper.
“To come with that diabolic suggestion to our people is a stupid offer,” he said.
At the end of the Commonwealth summit in October, Cameron said that countries receiving British aid should respect human rights, including gay rights.
A spokeswoman from Cameron’s Downing Street office would not comment directly on Mugabe’s remarks but said Britain “is at the forefront of work to promote human rights around the world, and regularly criticises governments which violate those rights.
“This includes working to end religious intolerance, and persecution and discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexuality,” she said in a statement.

Mugabe was speaking in the mining town of Shurugwi, 300 kilometres (185 miles) south of Harare, at a ceremony to mark global miner Anglo American’s handover of a 10 percent stake in a platinum mine to the local community.
The deal is part of Anglo American’s moves to comply with a law backed by Mugabe, requiring foreign firms to cede 51 percent stakes to local blacks.
He bluntly told companies to leave the country if they fail to comply.”This is our policy. We do not hide it. We want empowerment of our people. Those who do not want, we say go now, if not yesterday,” Mugabe said.
“The wealth must be exploited in the interest of our people.”
Mugabe’s moves against foreign companies come a decade after his government seized most of the nation’s white-owned farms, sending the economy into a tailspin from which it has just begun to recover.