Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
27 JANUARY 2004
MR RICHARD
DOWDEN AND
DR STEVE
KIBBLE
Q100 Mr Hamilton: May
I just explore this slightly further? I accept what you say about
Mbeki and his role in the struggle against Apartheid and oppression
and that he was very much a diplomat. I accept also that Mugabe
was helpful to the struggle against Apartheid and was a great
ally of the black majority and the black majority leaders. However,
ordinary South Africans must be seeing an awful lot of the refugees
streaming across the border. One estimate is that it has cost
over £1 billion so far to look after Zimbabwean refugees.
Surely, when somebody who, like Mugabe, has been a very good friend,
has turned the way he has against his own people, black people,
who have been oppressed by the white regime under Ian Smith, who
are now supposedly in control of their own destinies yet are opposed
to Robert Mugabe and are being murdered, beaten, arrested and
starved to death, I cannot understand why, in spite of everything
you have said, Mbeki cannot show some leadership, not under pressure
from the West or from the UK, but simply against that kind of
oppression of a black majority. This is the very thing, the very
tyranny he fought against now being practised by somebody whom
he regards as a brother. I just wonder whether you can comment
on that.
Dr Kibble: South
Africa had initial problems in trying to break from seeing Zimbabwe
within the prism of its own experience of negotiations, of the
Mandela miracle and the rest of it. It took quite some time to
transform perceptions that way. At the same time there is undoubtedly
a populist constituency inside South Africa which does see the
coincidence of white economic interests and Western desires as
being congruent. All that is a backdrop and there is an historical
context as well, which one has to take into account, of colonialism
and expropriation and the rest of it. To some extent, the way
that Mugabe transformed the debate from one of human rights and
governance, into a very significantly charged debate inside southern
Africa with the resonances of land, historic injustice and race,
then it became very hard for people we work with in South Africa
to say to people that this is not about land, this is about governance,
it is about democracy, it is about people being killed. The perceptions
we have are that significant sections of the southern African
civil society are moving. There have been meetings in Gabarone
in the last year, there have been meetings in Johannesburg, there
has been pressure from the churches both in Zimbabwe and solidarity
from South African churches and to a lesser extent some of the
other regional churches. That has been occurring. If you want
a rather provocative viewpoint, some people, particularly those
inside Zimbabwe and far Left critics of Mbeki, say that Mbeki
is not actually interested in peace. What he is interested in
is picking up the Zimbabwean economy and Zimbabwe skilled labour
very cheaply. I am not saying I agree with that, but the fact
that people think that inside southern Africa in response to Mbeki's
failure to move, is quite symptomatic of some of the breakdowns
in relationships which have occurred within southern Africa.
Mr Hamilton: I hope that
is not the cynical white media which is putting that view forward.
Q101 Chairman: Is the
attitude of President Mbeki to the Movement for Democratic Change
perhaps coloured by the fact that it might be a precedent for
trade unions in South Africa and the role of COSATU?
Mr Dowden: My understanding
is that while things have gone a little better recently Mbeki
and Morgan Tsvangirai do not get on at all—
Q102 Chairman: So it personal.
Mr Dowden: It is
personal. He does not rate him as a potential leader. He is very
suspicious of the fact that the MDC was bankrolled by the white
farmers and yes, there is that precedent that COSATU in South
Africa could produce a leader like Tsvangirai who was formally
a trade union leader.
Dr Kibble: There
were also concerns when the Zambian Movement for Multi-party Democracy
came in. There are worries that COSATU at some point down the
road may well become so disenchanted with the kind of neo-liberal
thrust of the South African Government that they may split off
into some kind of populist new alliance. There are both domestic
worries and regional worries and the South African government
do not, as the Zimbabweans do, make the kind of analogy between
their separate struggles, which the Zimbabweans say is just like
the struggle against Apartheid. The South African ruling party
sees no analogy whatsoever and sees that the two liberation movements
have always been historically united and thus they should remain.
Q103 Sir John Stanley: Do
you have any views as to what more the British Government could
reasonably do in terms of exercising pressure or applying pressure
on President Mbeki to get him to be more proactive in relation
to Zimbabwe? We are all very, very conscious, indeed there was
a report on the news today, that something like six million Zimbabweans
are going to be dependent on external food aid.
Mr Dowden: Eight
million and a grain shortage in southern Africa generally this
year. The answer is that I think the personal break between the
Prime Minister and President Mbeki was so deep at Abuja that several
people have said to me that it is not recoverable, which is very
worrying both for NePAD and other aspects of British policy on
Africa.
Q104 Sir John Stanley: Do
you think that break was avoidable?
Mr Dowden: Up until
now I have simply tried to explain the way it seemed, I was not
making judgments. I declare my hand and say that I think Mr Blair
was absolutely right, but the way Britain handled it there was
not very sensitive. I was in Abuja and found that the British
had managed to alienate a lot of allies, who were in favour of
maintaining the suspension of Zimbabwe, but found themselves being
ordered around by the British in a way they found unacceptable,
not being treated as equals as the Commonwealth likes to maintain.
In the end, no, it was not avoidable. Mbeki was not going to move,
but the intensity of it, the almost make or break attitude from
both sides, may have been preventable. Fortunately I think the
relationship between Britain and Nigeria now is strong enough
to make up for that in that President Obasanjo has supported the
British position quite strongly and within the Commonwealth as
well.
Q105 Sir John Stanley: Could
you just elaborate? Who do you feel was doing the ordering around
at Abuja which was causing such resentment?
Mr Dowden: I do
not know. As a journalist I have certain names which were mentioned
to me off the record, but I think the British team there were
not as well prepared for the Commonwealth summit as they might
have been and they did not spend as much time as they might have
done in trying to woo their allies or just "schmooze"
them, which is what the Commonwealth summits are all about. They
are about heads of government meeting and getting to know each
other better and not enough time was put into making sure that
at least Britain's allies were happy and had had their five or
ten minutes, half an hour, talking to the Prime Minister.
Dr Kibble: The
concentration still needs to be on democracy, good governance,
it needs to be multilateral, it needs to be through institutions
which have respect inside Africa and it needs to involve things
like citizen to citizen relations, strengthening civil society
organisations which are talking about human rights, laying open
human rights abuses. To some extent there needs to be a much stronger
push to internationalise this situation inside such organs as
the United Nations. We keep hearing that the UN would not accept
something on Zimbabwe. I think the time is coming when there needs
to be a much stronger push on trying to internationalise it in
that specific direction. We just need to be aware, in the words
of Desmond Tutu, that South Africa needs to act, because if it
does not act for its neighbours, when is it going to act if things
happen at home. It is a stark kind of comment, but Desmond Tutu
often puts things in a context one can respond to.
Q106 Sir John Stanley: When
you talk about the internationalisation of it, particularly inside
the UN, who do you feel should be taking a lead in that? Obviously
Britain has some historical baggage of considerable variety, but
it appears pretty clear to us in this Committee that Zimbabwe
is a pretty low priority against the totality of issues around
the world, for example in the EU. The US administration has quite
a degree of focus on it, but it does not score very highly in
the EU, it does not score very highly elsewhere in the rest of
the world.
Dr Kibble: I admit
that is a problem and I think that is why there has not been the
push which might have helped earlier on. Whether the time is not
yet right or whether we can start to put some pre-conditions together
with sympathetic African states is something to be seriously considered.
I am not saying that I think it would work immediately, but there
needs to be a slightly paradigmatic shift in that sense, from
saying that the UN is not going to deal with this, to saying let
us pursue it with rather more vigour than we have done, inside
the EU, with a number of Scandinavian states who historically
have been big allies of some of the southern African states and
do not have the colonial baggage. There are various options to
pursue in that way. There is a "Third-Worldist" option
possibly as well.
Q107 Chairman: If South
Africa chose, what are the principal levers it could use to bring
pressure to bear? Presumably there are substantial debts and among
those would be the debt to Eskom and energy generally. South Africa,
if it wanted, could presumably turn off the energy taps.
Dr Kibble: That
is true.
Mr Dowden: But
so far they have not even publicly criticised them. Every time
Mbeki and Mugabe meet they embrace, there are big smiles. Just
a freezing out of the Zimbabwean leadership would be a start.
You are not welcome here, if you come here you come for talks
and you are met very formally rather than with the warm solidarity
which is what is shown at the moment. That would be a start: a
public disapproval of what is happening there, the breaking of
the rule of law, the human rights abuses. That would go quite
a long way. Yes, there are levers. They do not even have to turn
off the lights, just remind them that all their electricity comes
from South Africa by turning them off for an hour in the evening
from time to time. There are 1,001 ways: they could tighten the
border, they could put patrols on the border to pick up the Zimbabweans
coming across. There are 1,001 ways in which neighbouring countries,
where one is very big and powerful can send messages very simply.
Q108 Sir John Stanley: May
I now turn to the very important issue of land reform inside South
Africa? Could you help the Committee to try to get to an objective
assessment of the significance of the new proposed amendments
to the land restitution law, which President Mbeki has come forward
with? We understand, as reported in The Independent on
12 January, that this is going to empower the Minister for Land
Affairs to expropriate land without a court order and without
the land owner's agreement. The South African Government has suggested
that this is basically beneficial and is designed to head off
the sort of situation which has occurred in Zimbabwe: whereas
others have taken completely the reverse view and said this is
just the start of a Zimbabwean type process. Could you help the
Committee? What is your judgment as to the implications of these
particular legislative amendments?
Dr Kibble: I thought
it was interesting that the Financial Mail, which might
be said to be the house organ of South African capital, was extremely
relaxed about it and said that this was a measure which would
actually help speed up, that it would provide equity along with
restitution. That is quite interesting. There certainly is a danger
that the political economy of South Africa will not necessarily
see a land grab such as ZANU-PF have undertaken, but will see
continuing local violence. There are far more South African farmers
killed in "criminal violence" than there are Zimbabwean
farmers for instance. All deaths of course are to be regretted.
The landless movement inside South Africa has the potential to
create a stir, but is nowhere near anything like the state-sponsored,
informal, violent, third force kind of violence we saw in Zimbabwe.
That is not to say that does not remain as one of a number of
options, but moving to a situation where you can speed up the
historic dispossession of the black majority in South Africa can
only be advantageous. The procedure for the ministry to intervene
is only a last resort, as I understand it. South Africa, having
proclaimed it would transform 30%, has only managed to process
land claims for 2%. Something needed to happen and this legislation
is probably not perfect and there are constitutional implications
with the South African constitution which would stop a wholesale
expropriation anyway, assuming that South Africa still continues
to follow the legal and constitutional route, which I have every
expectation it will do.
Mr Dowden: A lot
of white farmers have been killed there, but that was not part
of a land grab in any shape or form: it was for whatever was in
the safe. Whilst there is a land movement in South Africa, it
in no way has any official sanction and is not supported by the
government, which seems, on the contrary, rather than breaking
up the land and giving everybody a little piece of land, which
is the emotive feeling in Zimbabwe, to be much more wanting to
empower black commercial farmers, who would farm in a similar
way to the way the farming has been done up until now. It could,
however, build in the long run, depending on how South Africa
goes, into quite a big issue and it is one which we would do well
to keep a close eye on.
Q109 Sir John Stanley: What
is your view as to the degree of fairness of the compensation
which is offered when land is taken compulsorily? What is your
view as to the adequacy of the safeguards for the employment and
the houses of those who are the existing farm workers in white
farms which are then transferred to black ownership?
Mr Dowden: If it
is a straight transfer from a white commercial farmer to a black
commercial farmer, presumably he would also need the workers.
I would have thought there was far more threat from modernisation
and mechanisation to the livelihoods of rural South Africa and
the general process of globalisation than there would be from
taking over farms in the way it has been done in Zimbabwe, where
the farm workers are just driven off. In terms of compensation,
I do not know the details, so I am not really qualified to speak
on that.
Q110 Sir John Stanley: Dr
Kibble, can you help us on compensation?
Dr Kibble: I am
afraid I cannot either. I have studied some of the broad outlines
of this bill and I must admit that it is still in my reading pile.
Q111 Mr Hamilton: Susan
Rice, the former Assistant Secretary of State under Bill Clinton,
once referred to Africa as the world's "soft underbelly"
for global terrorism. Do you think the West's war on terrorism
has paid insufficient attention to Africa in general and South
Africa in particular?
Mr Dowden: Not
really. I think she is very mistaken. If you think of all the
liberation movements right across Africa, some terrible things
happened, but they were never involved in the type of terrorism
that al-Qaeda pursues and even when things have been extremely
bad, for example hijacking planes and killing civilians has never
been part of political opposition in Africa. Even in the Horn
of Africa, in Somalia, which is an amazingly open society, it
would be extremely difficult for foreign movements to work there
without everybody knowing about them. I also disagree that even
countries which have an Islamic issue like Nigeria or Kenya or
Somalia can somehow be brought into the al-Qaeda agenda. When
I have spoken to people there, they say no, that this is a Middle
East thing, it is about Palestine, it is about Saudi Arabia, it
is nothing to do with Africa. I have not met many Africans who
have any sympathy or anything but condemnation for what is going
on.
Dr Kibble: I think
they would find it difficult, given the criminality of some of
the African elites, to provide a basis for any form of international
terrorism. There are certain areas of instability which do involve
an Islamic element; very few in southern Africa, with the possible
exception of the Cape Flats. What we are looking at here is a
very localised situation in South Africa and the main focus is
undoubtedly across into the Middle East. Africa's problems have
very little to do with terrorism, except possibly as a kind of
marginalisation, because so much effort of the world is concentrated
on those areas where there is terrorism, or thought to be the
potential for terrorism. Africa suffers, but indirectly and not
by engagement.
Q112 Mr Hamilton: So you
do not feel that the global terrorists of the kind represented
by al-Qaeda, who want to destroy the West, will have any comfort
or home anywhere in Africa, especially in southern Africa?
Dr Kibble: I cannot
see why al-Qaeda would go there rather than more congenial places,
to be honest.Mr Dowden: I fundamentally disagree
with the idea that because people are poor, they will therefore
be anti-West. My experience in Africa is that they tend to identify
local elites, different ethnic groups, as the source of their
problem, not the West. Obviously Somalia was different and they
ended up very, very angry with the Americans, but even there now,
there is no . . . A Somali summed it up the other day when he
said "If al-Qaeda is about Islam, then we are all al-Qaeda.
But it is not: it is about an Arab cause and we are not Arabs.
It is nothing to do with us".Q113 Mr Hamilton: Do
you think South Africa itself has the resources, the police, the
intelligence and the wherewithal to deal with international terrorism
in the unlikely event, from what you say, of those terrorists
wanting to use South Africa as a base for any particular reason?
Do they have the resources? Do they do enough to help the struggle
against international terrorism globally?
Dr Kibble: They
had a large problem in the post-independence period where lots
of military spending was downgraded, where they had to reconcile
six different kinds of forces, where there was a desire for the
military and security forces to reflect the population groups
as they were. Until Jackie Selebi came in to the DFA, until there
were significant moves, the South Africans would certainly have
been on the back foot if those kinds of threats had existed, as
they are now. I still think that southern Africa is not the site
for future terrorist operations, although one could say that the
Gulf of Guinea, which is coming up as a major oil producer to
the West, could possibly fill that role sometime in the future.
For the moment, I do not consider that a high priority. South
Africans have been buying arms; they are a major arms supplier.
Of course they are also in a region which, whilst awash with small
arms, is certainly not geared up to security considerations and
to military operations outside their borders. The South Africans
have probably stretched themselves enough in terms of the kind
of peace-keeping areas in which they are already involved, the
DRC and other places.Q114 Mr Hamilton: Does either of you
feel that South Africa could have a role in helping the rest of
the world fight international terrorism? Especially when you mention
its role in arms production and purchase.
Dr Kibble: They
have not shown that they have the expertise to deal with it, because
they have not had to deal with it really. The only terrorists
they had to deal with was the white Right in South Africa and
some of the horrible things which went on there. In terms of that
being terror, yes, but it is also true that the ANC was not a
particularly effective military organisation whilst quite effective
politically. To be honest, the answer to your question is no.Q115
Mr Illsley: A couple of quick questions following on from
what you have just mentioned about South African defence policies
and a question about South Africa in its own region. The Committee
has received evidence in written form suggesting that South Africa
has been able to punch above its weight and has been able to do
so because it had the momentum of the past, in particular figures
such as Mandela. In the same evidence we have also been warned
that there is a risk that we are perhaps asking too much of South
Africa, and the West is expecting too much of South Africa. Given
that the country is undoubtedly the principal regional power,
do you believe there is that danger that the UK and others are
over-estimating South Africa's ability and willingness to act
as the regional policeman?
Mr Dowden: I would
make two points here. One is that because Mbeki was Mandela's
foreign minister and now Mbeki is his own foreign minister, the
foreign affairs department of South Africa is weak. The second
point is that the military expenditure, the recent huge arms purchases,
seem to me to be totally inappropriate for anything other than
fighting a conventional war. Exactly who is South Africa going
to fight? It seems the wrong sort of equipment for the peace-keeping
role which is the only one South Africa could be called upon to
do. They have spent their money, in terms of that intervention
as a peace-keeping role, very badly. I do not think they have
the diplomatic and intelligence clout sometimes to fulfil that
other role of knowing how to go into a place in the first place.Q116
Mr Illsley: Should we be giving that expertise, that resource
to South Africa?
Dr Kibble: There
was an interesting recent speech by Jacob Zuma, the Deputy President,
saying that expectations on South Africa—and I think he
was implying internal as well as external and regional—were
so high from 1994 in moral, economic and political terms, that
they got a bit carried away. This speech was last September. He
said that there really has to be a downgrading of their expectations
and other people's expectations of them. In a sense that is probably
the answer.
Q117 Mr Illsley: What
role does the Southern African Development Community (SADC) play
in promoting regional economic and political developments?Dr
Kibble: SADC has certainly attempted to move forward in
a number of ways: free trade area, agreements on human rights,
on gender, on a number of different aspects. The overwhelming
impression is that they have a capacity problem. Even when the
EU was funding possibly more than it does now, there has never
been any sign that the nation states have really accepted a form
of regionalism which moves SADC forward. It has been very much
a nation state and bilaterals, rather than necessarily SADC consciousness.
In fact SACU has probably worked rather more coherently and consistently
than SADC which was probably opposite to the hopes of many of
us in 1994. That is history for you.
Q118 Chairman: You mentioned
the quality of the foreign policy direction in South Africa. Can
you comment on the quality of the diplomatic personnel? Blacks
were effectively excluded from the diplomatic service until the
change of government. Many of those in the ANC had experience
only in the non-aligned movement and opposition-type work, hence
the link with Libya and others; clearly the Soviet Union as a
sponsor faded from the picture in the early 1990s. Many of those
who were put in high positions were those who were owed debts
arising from the liberation struggle. Is that a constraint on
the ability of South Africa to play a greater role overseas, the
training, the quality of the personnel in the diplomatic service?
Mr Dowden: My experience
here and visiting South African embassies and high commissions
in Africa is that sometimes you meet extremely good, hard-working,
well-informed diplomats who are doing a brilliant job and the
South Africans have many like that. At a secondary level, they
do not have the systems in place to provide the backup which is
needed for a really serious diplomatic effort. They are weak in
that department and that may be something Britain could help them
with, with training them how to run a foreign service.
Q119 Chairman: Would they
be reluctant to look for such training in the UK, or would they
look elsewhere?Mr Dowden: I do not see why they
should be. It is simply training. It is just the sort of thing,
with the language and so on, that they might pick up.Dr
Kibble: You are pointing to two things here: one is a
personal thing about the diplomats' experience and quality and
education; the other is a structural inheritance from when the
ANC came into power of debts from people who had helped the liberation
struggle and an ambivalent relationship with the West, but knowing
that their economic future lay with the West. This kind of much
vaunted idea that South Africa is a bridge between the developed
and undeveloped world, or the developing world, is an interesting
one to pursue. I am not sure that it completely works all the
time, but the diplomats in a sense are geared towards that kind
of bridging end in their minds, of trying to bring African discourse
into the West and to some extent western ideas into Africa. I,
like Richard, have met some extremely capable ANC or black diplomats,
many of whom were of course involved in the liberation struggle
abroad and cut their teeth on how to wheel deals in a number of
international fora, where the ANC was rather more widely recognised
than the then South African Government.
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