Zimbabwe

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:57 pm on 1 July 2004.

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Photo of Patrick Cormack Patrick Cormack Conservative, South Staffordshire 4:57, 1 July 2004

I apologise to the House for being out of the Chamber for some time after the opening speeches, but I was chairing a Committee elsewhere. I am glad to have this opportunity to make a brief contribution, although it will not be quite as brief as the admirable contribution of Mr. Hopkins. He spoke with fervour and feeling, and I hope that his colleagues on the Front Bench will respond positively to what he said.

I remember being in the House one evening in 1979, when the late Ian Gow came to me and said, "Would you mind coming to the boss's room and cheering her up a bit? We're going to watch the handover in Zimbabwe." I duly went to the Prime Minister's room. My wife happened to be with me at the time—there were about a dozen of us altogether—and we sat there with Margaret Thatcher watching the small television set that she had in her room. We saw the immaculate Christopher Soames, who had gone over there as governor, and the handover was a most impressive sight. After it was over, I said, "Thank you, Prime Minister, for letting us watch this with you. This is an amazing achievement for your Government, so early in its period of office", or words to that effect. She gave me a steely look—she was quite good at that—and said, "Don't you be so sure. You wait and see how it all works out." Those were prophetic words.

The handover had to take place, Lord Carrington and others handled it with consummate diplomatic skill and it was a great achievement. What has followed, however, has borne out something of what Margaret Thatcher said. Certainly, no one who has taken part in this debate—I have had a briefing on some of the speeches—has not been appalled by the evil tyranny that we have seen unfold over the last few years.

During the Foreign Secretary's speech, mention was made of the massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s, and it is true that, with one or two notable and honourable exceptions, people did not speak out. I was not one of those who spoke out particularly at that time—I wish I had known more, and I wish I had done so. Kate Hoey and I spoke out at the time of Bosnia, and I am very glad that we did. We played a small part in changing the Government's and the Opposition's policy. It is crucial that as we look at Zimbabwe now, we speak out and urge our Government to speak out a little more.

I do not for a moment cast any doubts on the integrity of Her Majesty's Ministers on the subject of Zimbabwe. I do not for a moment question their good faith. I am sure that everyone who has taken part in this debate, including both the Foreign Secretary and the Minister who will wind up, can unite in deploring the tyranny and evil. We are at one. I want to take it a stage further, however.

First, we must remind ourselves constantly of just how evil this regime is. When I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee, I received on its behalf, with Mr. Olner, who is not here today, a delegation from Matabeleland. The stories that we were told by those brave men—of the sterilisation of their women, of the food that they were not allowed to have, of the appalling visits in the night, and of all the other things that one associates with a tyrannical police state—were terrible. A few months later, I was invited to meet the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, who is also a man of enormous stature and dignity. He has spoken out with a bravery that few of us would be able to emulate. Thank God that he is still there, and long may he remain there. Again, what he told us about the nature of that regime, and of the supine attitude of some other clergy there, who ought to speak out and do not, was salutary.

More recently, something has come to my notice in a personal capacity that I want to mention briefly in the House. One of my great friends and contemporaries when I was a schoolmaster many years ago, Dr. Alan Megahey, went out in 1983 to be the rector of Peterhouse, which is one of the foremost schools in Zimbabwe. At that stage, it educated boys—and now boys and girls—both black and white, and by the time that Alan Megahey left, the majority of the pupils were black. Robert Mugabe had paid the school a visit, given out the prizes and said what a wonderful institution it was. A few weeks ago, Alan Megahey's successor was briefly put in jail, and the school was threatened with closure. Of course, the same has happened to private schools, to which my hon. Friends have referred, throughout Zimbabwe.

I sent some documents to the Foreign Secretary and I had a reply a few weeks later from the Minister who is sitting on the Treasury Bench. His reply was in most respects impeccable. I shall quote what I approve of. He said he condemned the arrests, and that Ministers were dismayed that they had taken place

"despite a court order nullifying the Government of Zimbabwe's decision to close the schools . . . It is appalling that head teachers such as the current Rector of Peterhouse have received such treatment at the hands of the Mugabe regime. Our Embassy in Harare has kept a close eye on this issue . . . It is tragic that a school which has done so much to foster multi racial and multi gender education in Zimbabwe"

—I do not much like the syntax, but the sentiment is admirable—

"may now be forced to close as a result of Mugabe's policies. As Dr Megahey's memo makes clear, if the school is not permitted to remain as an economically viable institution, it will have to close. This will be just as damaging for black Zimbabwean pupils, staff and their families as for white."

That is all is splendid stuff, but then the Minister writes, and I referred to this briefly in an intervention on the Foreign Secretary:

"You suggest we make representations to the Zimbabwean Ambassador. The Government of Zimbabwe is fully aware of our views on its human rights abuses, which our European partners and we have condemned on numerous occasions. I do not believe that raising this issue with the Ambassador here will lead to any change in Zimbabwe policy."

I am afraid I saw red. I immediately wrote back to the Foreign Secretary, on 18 June, marking the letter for his personal attention. I make no complaint about the fact that after a fortnight he may still not have seen it. The Foreign Secretary is a busy man and a decent man. He has a lot to do. The Minister, too, is a decent man. He has campaigned vigorously on a number of issues, not always with my total agreement but always with my complete admiration. This is nothing personal.

I wrote that I was disappointed by the Minister's response:

"I entirely accept the Government's good faith" and said that I had "a high regard" for the Minister and the Foreign Secretary, but continued:

"But surely the fact that you do not believe that raising this issue with the Ambassador will achieve very much is no adequate excuse for not raising it. The more that Zimbabwe knows that we disapprove of its Government's actions across a whole range of issues the more it will become isolated, especially if we give publicity to our disapproval. I . . . would be grateful if you would have another think about this one".

When I intervened on the Foreign Secretary, he replied that I had a good point. I hope that we will never—merely because we think we will not achieve anything—not tell the Zimbabwean ambassador in London that we deplore action of this kind. The actions of a repressive, tyrannical regime should always call for comment and condemnation from a civilised Government in a civilised country. I very much hope that following this debate the Foreign Secretary or the Minister will tell the ambassador precisely what he thinks of that sort of action. We must do more. As I said, it is not a question of good faith. It is not a question of saying that the Government are soft on Zimbabwe, but we must do more within the limitations that constrain us. Of course we cannot send an army to Zimbabwe, and of course we should not impose general sanctions that would further depress the living standards of people who are already living in dire poverty and penury as they suffer from a man who can perhaps be compared only with Papa Doc for the way he treats people. I think, though, that there are things than can be done. Let me make one or two suggestions, some of which I know have already been mentioned.

That list of 95—not 79—is not long enough. Anyone who is associated with those people should not be allowed to benefit from the way in which they are behaving. I want an assurance that all the assets of such people will be frozen. I want an assurance that those who send their children to school in this country, while denying children in Zimbabwe an opportunity to go to places such as Peterhouse, are not allowed to do so. I want an assurance from the Minister that anyone with any connection with this brutal regime will treated as an outcast and a pariah, not allowed into this country, and not allowed to benefit in any way, directly or indirectly.

I want more than that. I want the Foreign Secretary to give this issue a higher profile. I want him to invite to Carlton house all the African ambassadors and high commissioners, and I want him to tell them just what importance this Government attach to the Zimbabwe issue. I want him to tell them that although we have always been glad to help African nations in need and want to continue to help them, they themselves have a moral responsibility not to allow that cancer to develop further in the south of their great continent.

There must be some real, plain, tough speaking of that sort. Some feathers will be ruffled, but so what? That should be a preliminary, and in addition a conference to address the issue should be convened by the British Government, to which Heads of State and Heads of Government should be invited. We have seen a country that was in many ways one of the most prosperous, fertile and potentially rich nations on the continent of Africa reduced in effect to a dustbowl, its people poverty stricken and ruled by a regime that imposes the most appalling conditions on them. We have seen that develop during the past 25 years, since independence was granted, and we have a moral duty and obligation to point to that constantly and to do everything that we can to convince the other African nations that if they want Africa to emerge as a continent that is light and not dark in every part, they must recognise that in a world where democracy should be the norm, dictatorship cannot be tolerated.

It is important that the Government up the rhetoric. There is a place for rhetoric.