Zimbabwe — Debate

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:25 pm on 10 June 2010.

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Photo of Lord Triesman Lord Triesman Labour 2:25, 10 June 2010

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, on securing the debate, which keeps Zimbabwe at the centre of our attention. I, too, miss Baroness Park and Lord Blaker. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, on his ministerial appointment.

On leaving the FCO in 2007, I thought it right to avoid debates on the geographical areas with which I had been most directly concerned. Ministerial life is hard enough without having your predecessors wandering over your turf. However, it left me with several unanswered questions and thoughts which, had I expressed them at the time, would have led me to stray still further from government lines than I was already prone to do. Perhaps I can explore some of them today, precisely because I believe that Zimbabwe was the country where our impact was far less than it should have been. I do not say this because I think Zimbabwe is a convenient metaphor for a wider African malaise. On the contrary, Africa is a continent, not a country; it is culturally, linguistically and economically diverse. Indeed, it is diverse in every way. It has great successes, often in spite of the hand dealt to it by colonialism.

However, Zimbabwe has not been one of Africa's beacons. Its modern history was scarred by the appalling and racist leadership of Ian Smith in Rhodesia, who-with apartheid South Africa-destabilised the entire region to ensure that there were no bases for anti-colonial forces. All in all, the UK role was not what it could or should have been. We turned a blind eye to sanctions-busting, particularly oil bound for Rhodesia. We played a less than proper role in the 1971 talks, where our proposals would have prevented democratic development in Zimbabwe for many decades and were rightly rejected by all black and progressive Africans. This has made it harder to get a sympathetic hearing in Africa.

None the less, Zimbabwe emerged as a productive land with a wealth of resources. The leader who emerged, Robert Mugabe, gradually set about the imposition of a one-party state-always his goal-after nominal observance of the Lancaster House agreement for seven years. Then, freed from any obligation, he suppressed the opposition, killed many of them, and instituted terror in Matabeleland. And so he has continued, election after election; win them or lose them, he remains essentially the sole power in every meaningful sense. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord St John, is too generous in thinking that the crisis only started in 1997, and perhaps too optimistic in general. I mean no discourtesy in expressing the point. ZANU-PF's leaders remain to this day a watchword for corruption and violence among many Africans. I will not go through the soaring inflation and plunging life expectancy; we are all familiar with the facts. More than 3 million refugees were forced to cross the Limpopo in search of food. Whatever South Africa's non-intervention was intended to achieve, one consequence was a tsunami of desperation, now costing South Africa $3 billion a year.

Where is the Zimbabwean economy now? Without the excellent resources of the FCO, I can only estimate from 2009 data. I recognise that things have changed since the exchange mechanism changed. I can see that there is promise; I understand the point. However, there are significant doubts about what has fundamentally changed. Today, the power sector is in a parlous and deteriorating state. Demand exceeds supply by two and a half times. Nothing has been done to infrastructure in more than 20 years. Power lines are ancient and 5,000 kilometres of power cable have been stolen. If you cannot generate power, you cannot make things, run hospitals or light homes. Water and sanitation are still in a persistently dangerous state. Cholera killed 4,000 people in 2008 and early 2009. The regime puts health, agriculture and production at risk every day, just from the crisis in managing water properly, even if there have been some developments in the supply of fresh water.

The 88,000 kilometres of road have been neglected. There are no materials, modern machines or basic skills aside from those brought in by incoming Chinese investors where those are directly connected to their investment, and which are frequently removed when the building work has been done. That building work is infrequently carried out by African labour. Seventy per cent of the road network has decayed. Railways, in what was the strategic hub of south central Africa, are in much the same state as the roads. Goods and people cannot be moved to markets with any ease, so few markets operate and economic conditions for regeneration are poor.

The information and communications system has declined and now ranks marginally above those of Chad and East Timor. Mining has declined with the flight of skills. Gold mining stopped in 2009 for lack of recapitalisation although I acknowledge that it has now restarted and there is some progress. Diamonds and platinum offer hope if properly managed and not used for improper outcomes, but those who wish to invest in that mining are concerned that they should make their investment against a background of greater political stability.

I doubt whether anything more needs to be said in this House about the decay of commercial and communal agriculture, which still remains in so poor a state. Manufacturing has declined by 10 per cent a year since 2000. Today, it barely exists; nor do financial services or a credible central bank. Tourism had potential yet the World Economic Forum recently ranked Zimbabwe 121 of 133 travel destinations. Few tourists will venture to a country in which there has been so much brutality and which simply leaves people enfeebled by HIV and AIDS on Harare's municipal rubbish dump.

We in this House have all expressed our outrage and have urged, and achieved, limited EU sanctions on some individuals. We have opposed relaxation of IMF rules on debt and have rightly supplied extensive food aid to the innocent victims of the Mugabe regime. We have placed cautious hope in Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, who have had every conceivable difficulty placed in their way in trying to form some sort of government who can move forward, despite the fact that they won the previous general election. However, our response was far too limited. Our expectation of political intervention by the African Union and SADC was unrealistic. The AU, with few staff and limited finance, has been expected to shoulder massive tasks right across Africa from Darfur to Mogadishu to the DRC. Neither the AU nor SADC had the political will on all occasions, and most certainly did not have the capacity, to fulfil such a remit, even had it wanted to. Both would have had to ignore the most powerful regional leaders. It is obviously right-I subscribe completely to this view-to want to build the political authority of multinational institutions in Africa, but it was wrong to pretend that such authority was already there.

I was told time and again by exceptional African administrators that while it was vital for Africans to take ownership of African problems, they could not make bricks without straw. I ask with suitable circumspection, as I am self-critical in this regard, whether the Government have a view of what can be achieved by greater engagement with the AU and SADC, and especially with South Africa? It would surely be negligent if we did not take on that task. Hardliners are certainly seeking to frustrate the process and they may very well succeed as they have succeeded more often than they have failed. Optimism is okay, but if things go badly what should we do next? I am often told that we should be cautious because we do not want to take steps which gratuitously endanger excellent FCO and local staff in Harare. That is a genuine concern and I share it. However, is the Minister satisfied that they are safe and can provide help for the domiciled retired British population in Zimbabwe who are themselves at risk? The consequence of our caution was that we sought sanctions, and sanctioned ZANU's leaders, only if we were confident of EU backing, which we did not always have. I could not agree with that approach because I thought that we should push far deeper through the ranks of criminality in the regime. Would the Government be prepared to act unilaterally if necessary, because that may be the consequence of what I am saying?

Perhaps I may share the view that it would be helpful to make sure that we are as fully engaged with South Africa and its new leader as we can be. I wonder if this is not the moment to try again to achieve a more formal plan for long-standing political and economic change in Zimbabwe, building on what might be the seeds of its beginnings. The new President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, as my noble friend Lord Hughes said, has considerable authority. He has committed himself to poverty reduction and he may be unwilling to bear the unnecessary costs of a difficult northern neighbour. I know from his state visit that he is a tough pragmatist and that he is the key leader in southern Africa. He may be willing to reopen the kind of holistic approach that Kofi Annan so often and so eloquently advocated. He has surely reflected on the decades of so-called quiet diplomacy from South Africa which were wholly ineffective. The need now is for a comprehensive approach to rehabilitation on the basis of the sort of plan that Kofi Annan outlined. A new opportunity would require careful preparation, but does the Minister, on behalf of the Government, see any advantage in assessing this new window of opportunity? I hope that as he does, he will not feel it necessary to give people a "get out of jail free" pass, whatever kinds of crimes they have committed.

Finally, I do not accept the point that has often been made that if we say anything about President Mugabe it will make it easier for him to denounce us among other African leaders. Many people in this House will have reasons for their criticism. I know mine. My political generation grew up as anti-colonialist, not as covert colonialists. My politics were formed in the 1960s, much by the close friends who were then exiled in London with the ANC. My understanding of Mugabe's probable trajectory came from Oliver Tambo and Govan Mbeki, not from any apologist for Ian Smith. I do not accept that those serving the previous Government or indeed today's new generation in government should allow themselves to be characterised by the politics of 40 years ago.