Examination of Witness (Questions 120-125)
MR JOSEPH
WINTER
TUESDAY 21 JANUARY 2003
120. If there is no change—and there is
no indication of any change—we are suddenly going to wake
up and realise there are problems on a massive scale, problems
of malnutrition. There will be people who are not just hungry,
they are actually dying in the gutters, as it were. It might be
coupled with or aggravated by the extent of AIDS, but that is
a quarter of the population any way. It seems to me that whilst
this afternoon I actually have some sympathy with the British
Government it seems to me that there comes a point where the international
community has to say that this is now anarchical and we cannot
acquiesce on this any longer.
(Mr Winter) The situation will gradually get worse.
I am not sure what the time frame is, at what point it is going
to develop from a few people (who are already very weak from AIDS)
dying into massive numbers. I am just not sure. I believe the
harvests are around April so that will provide some respite for
some people around April. The rains have not been great and the
harvest is not going to be wonderful but there will be some crops
which will be harvested around April which will provide some respite.
Mr Bill Olner
121. Just a quick question on this because it
has been fairly well reported that not only is the drought a problem
for us in Zimbabwe, but a lot of the famine is self-induced because
the land is not being farmed. Is that true?
(Mr Winter) I would like to say that a lot of the
commercial farming, the white-owned farms, have generally be producing
tobacco and cash crops rather then maize.
122. Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of
Africa. Now we have the view, through journalists, that farms
were failing because the land had been given away and was being
badly managed. Is that true?
(Mr Winter) To a large extent.
123. If it is true to a large extent there will
not be a bonus coming with the harvest when it comes.
(Mr Winter) A lot of maize, which is the basic food,
even before the land reform programme was intensified recently,
was grown by small scale black farmers who were growing crops
either on a subsistence level or on a very small commercial level.
Those people would not have been directly affected by the land
problems, so that is still going on except that the rains have
failed. But there is still going to be some production.
Chairman
124. I think Mr Mackinlay asked the key question.
Our job as a Committee is to monitor the British Government. There
is no particular failing which you can point out to this Committee
which we can highlight when we see the Minister.
(Mr Winter) Speaking personally, certainly not on
behalf of the BBC, I think possibly going back a couple a years
I remember Peter Hain using some rather undiplomatic language
and I do not think that helped the situation.
125. But in the current situation, unlike Mr
Oborne in his documentary who seemed to think the British Government
should be doing great things, you do not fall into that category.
(Mr Winter) I do not think so. I saw that documentary
and I do not think that sending the British Army or anything like
that into Zimbabwe would help the situation at all. I think possibly
what could be done is long term planning because the current situation
is not viable. In the long term there are going to be several
issues as to what happens. For example, talking about the land
reform programme, that is going to have to be settled if there
is a regime change; at some point there is going to be some change
of government one way or another and then there is going to be
an enormous legal dispute about who owns the land and things are
going to be worse than back to square one. Some kind of help in
long term planning can be ignored. People are focussing on whatever
the short term policies are, but—
Chairman: Not for our Committee today. Mr Winter,
thank you very much indeed for your help. The Committee will now
be going into a private session, so could the room be cleared.
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