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“just come back from witnessing an operation by the so-called Task Force at Makro”—
a large South African company that operates throughout southern Africa. The e-mail continues:
“The Task Force arrived mid morning and on a totally arbitrary basis, it ordered them to halve the prices of TVs, Fridges, Deep Freezers”
and a number of other products, including a “30 tonne load” of soap. It was a bizarre scene. Effectively, these shops were being looted. They were forced to sell goods on a preferential basis to supporters of ZANU-PF, who would be allowed in to buy those goods. Those shops are not going to restock. Speaking to employees, this business man said that there was concern that many jobs had effectively disappeared. Those are not the actions of a rational man, and they are not actions that will help save Zimbabwe.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) is no longer in his place. I had a conversation with him a few days ago in which he made some of the same points. He feared that we were rehearsing the same arguments time and again. However, I believe that things are changing on a daily basis. Even in last weekend’s press, there was some positive news about new thinking and new ideas coming out of southern Africa.
The idea of bringing Zimbabwe into the rand common monetary area is particularly important. It has already worked in Swaziland with the emalangeni, in Namibia with the dollar, in Lesotho with the loti—and it has even worked in Botswana, where although there is not an exact pegging to that economy, there is an unofficial relationship between the two and a rate of approximately 70 per cent. Bringing Zimbabwe into that zone will enforce a much greater degree of macro-economic stability. In reality, most people do not use Zim dollars; they use US dollars, South African rand, and to a lesser degree, pounds sterling. If Mugabe goes and there is regime change, that is something very immediate that can happen. However, it will not be a matter of SADC support alone. It will take international support and international money to achieve. The Government need to be prepared for those changes and agree informally with SADC the level of support that they will provide when called upon.
I may be reading too much into what the Minister said. She chose her words carefully when she said that
no formal discussion was going on with SADC about the rand common monetary area. The issue was widely trailed in South African newspapers, and discussions with other countries were mentioned. I very much hope that the British Government are involved in some informal discussions. I was pleased to hear the governor of the central bank of South Africa say that there was a long way to go before bringing Zimbabwe into the rand-dollar area. In saying that, he was nevertheless recognising that we have started to make some progress towards a potential economic solution for Zimbabwe.
That will be good for Zimbabwe not only economically, but politically. One of the key ways in which Mugabe supports his regime is through foreign exchange deals with the central bank at a preferential rate; he and his ZANU-PF Ministers and members then sell that hard currency on the open parallel market, making vast profits. As well as providing economic stability, this action will help to remove one of the levers of Mugabe’s oppression and corruption.
I would like further to reinforce the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) about the governor of the central bank in Zimbabwe. There is no way that that gentleman will play any part in any economic future for Zimbabwe. We know that he is not welcome in the UK. I recognise that we need to work through the EU if at all possible. However, I would be much happier if, in the event that a travel ban cannot be obtained through the EU, the UK had the courage of its convictions and imposed a travel ban in any case.
It is important to prepare for change. When Mugabe goes, things will not get better on day one. Electricity is still likely to go out and foodstuffs will not immediately flow into the country—so, very quickly, we could find that the new regime rather than Mugabe is blamed for those failures. We need to provide support to SADC to plan for that change, and to ensure that food, fuel and electricity are supplied. We need to assist a new Zimbabwe to rebuild a civil society, because, piece by piece, Mugabe has broken down all the institutions of civil society, so that he has not simply the office of President, but the only power that there is.
We need to send the right message, which means working with the African Union, the European Union, the South African Development Community, Thabo Mbeki, and Festus Mogae in Botswana. I was deeply disappointed by the lack of strength in the Minister’s earlier comments about the summit in Portugal. I urge other Members to sign early-day motion 1870, calling for Mugabe not to be invited. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea mentioned an article in The Sunday Times. It is not just civil servants who are briefing, because an unnamed Minister is quoted as saying:
“You can be sure Mugabe will get himself photographed shaking Gordon’s hand. There’s no way that’s going to happen...If it means the meeting cannot go ahead, so be it. It’s already been delayed for years.”
I hope that in summing up, the Minister will make it clear that that position has not been diluted since the weekend press report, as that would be a step backwards.
I fully support the EU travel ban being extended to family members. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall said, sporting relationships are critical. The Government should be sending a much tougher message, not only on
cricket but on the World cup in South Africa in 2010, making it clear that free nations are not prepared to play practice games in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
Everyone would want to congratulate Edinburgh university on revoking Mugabe’s honorary degree. Just before the changeover in government, I wrote to a previous Foreign Office Minister to inquire about Mugabe’s honorary knighthood, granted in 1994. I was unclear whether the Government are able or willing to revoke that knighthood.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: They can.
James Duddridge: My hon. Friend indicates from a sedentary position that the Government can revoke the knighthood. In that case, I am sure that Members of the House who have spoken in the debate, who know a lot about Zimbabwe, will call on the Government to do that with great haste.
Another window of opportunity is coming up with the Kampala Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. It is essential that Zimbabwe be on the agenda. The President of Zimbabwe might have taken his country out of the Commonwealth, but the people of Zimbabwe remain in the Commonwealth. We should use the opportunity of Kampala to advance their cause and make it clear to other African leaders who are critical in private that they need to be critical in public, to make the change that is sorely needed.
5.8 pm
Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con): It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), who has added new dimensions to the debate and is a respected member of the all-party group. It is also a great pleasure to follow many right hon. and hon. Members who have shown the passion that exists in the House on this issue.
As a relatively new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs had a very difficult job in facing Members who have great knowledge and understanding of the issue. I did not attack her, because she made the best of that job. If I were her, however, I would have a serious word with my officials when I got back to King Charles street. They did not predict the buttons that the House wanted pressed today, and did not equip her properly to enter the debate.
I shall not go through many of the issues that have been raised in the debate. I find it hard to keep an even tone, because it is difficult for me, as it is for many people who know and love Zimbabwe, to find the adjectives and superlatives to describe what has happened there and those responsible for it.
I believe that, while cruelty and terror are a daily feature of what purports to be government in Zimbabwe, a vicarious cruelty is being visited on the people of Zimbabwe by those in state houses and presidential residences across Africa, whose refusal even to recognise the almost genocidal brutality of the Mugabe regime is ever present. Why do they do this? It is hard to have the optimism that some people have shown in the House today for the future of Africa when that ambivalence at best or connivance at worst exists in some of the African
Governments. It is hard to believe that Africa can really move on to where we, the previous Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister desire it to move—a more benevolent and economically successful world—when such attitudes persist.
Like ripples in a pond, this vicarious cruelty extends beyond the continent of Africa. It extends into the chancelleries of Europe. Countries waive or talk about waiving entry bans on Mugabe and a coterie of his supporters to allow this pariah to strut on the world stage. That has been much discussed today. It is hard to overestimate the value that Mugabe puts on being able to strut that stage. It is important that the Minister understands that and comments on it when he replies.
Let me set in context my knowledge and understanding of Zimbabwe. I, like many hon. Members, have travelled widely in that part of Africa. My first visit to Zimbabwe was during what one could call its halcyon days. I travelled in my 20s with a liberal naivety; I actually believed that it could work. I saw wonderful work being done by people who had been implacable enemies only a year or two before. There was a sense of optimism among white farmers, people who had been in the liberation struggle and people who had been stuck in the middle, who were the majority.
I worked with people from this country. The late Black Rod, Sir Edward Jones, who tragically died a few weeks ago—I mourn his death—set up the British military advisory team and worked with the Zimbabwean army to make it into a responsible organisation. At that time, there were rumblings about what was going on in Matabeleland. I saw lorry loads of North Korean troops entering the country and I should have seen then that things were going to go wrong—as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) has just described, they certainly did.
I could describe many more of my experiences in Zimbabwe, but one of the most telling was my visit during the parliamentary elections in 2000 with my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), who was then the shadow Foreign Secretary. We worked our way around the country trying to keep ahead of the Central Intelligence Organisation. We encountered Movement for Democratic Change candidates coming out of the darkness to meet with us. I found the experience intensely moving. We all come across courage in our lives and in our constituencies, but more often than not it is displayed as a result of an incident, illness, action or whatever. Here was premeditated courage. These were people who had made a decision to stand for Parliament, to make a stand or to be active politically, knowing that it would put their and their family’s lives in danger. That was a tremendous thing to experience. It is wonderful that so many people in Zimbabwe are prepared still to do that. I have worked with the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust here in London and been to Washington to see the wonderful work there to bring pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe.
As has been said in the debate, nothing will change while Mugabe remains in power. Only his removal will stop Zimbabwe from collapsing into a fully fledged failed state. This is where I differ slightly from the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), who seemed to adopt a rather more laissez-faire approach. He seemed
to say that change was happening, change would come, that we could not influence it from here and that we should more or less let it happen. I may be misrepresenting him; if so, I apologise. I believe that there is an urgent need for more action because Mugabe and the coterie of thugs around him are totally focused on one date; 2008, the year of the presidential elections. He will do all he can to win those elections.
There are three pinch-points on the Mugabe regime. First, there is the international community: the UK, the Commonwealth, the EU, the G8 and the UN. Much has already been said about their influence and what they can do. Then there are African leaders, particularly those of SADC countries. I have already touched on that. But the one on which I will dwell is the people of Zimbabwe, who provide the best possible opportunity to bring about the change we all want.
I achieved a certain notoriety last week—it is a badge I wear with honour—by being attacked in the Zimbabwe Herald about a comment I had made about wanting the people of Zimbabwe to rise up and remove Mugabe. I spoke about wanting to be there for the Ceausescu moment; we remember Ceausescu making a speech to what he thought was an adoring crowd who suddenly turned on him, at which point his face went chalk-white with fear. We know what happened after that.
I am not saying that I want the people of Zimbabwe to rise up in a bloody coup, because they have suffered enough. I want this to be brought about quietly and as expeditiously as possible. However, the people who will pull the plug on this despot are those who are closest to him. I will call them the coterie. Some refer to them as the big men—the likes of Emerson Mnangagwa, Mujuru and others. They can be made to feel the chill wind of their wealth and position threatened by the intransigence and actions of Mugabe.
Many of these people and their families are still able to travel. Many are able to use the shopping malls of the west to spend their ill-gotten gains. Most will have family members studying in Europe, particularly in the UK, and in the United States, or are using these countries for health care—all at a time when education and health care are denied to the people whom these characters have impoverished.
Some time ago I raised with the current Lord Chancellor the possibility of extending the travel ban and sending back people who are studying at our universities because they are the children, cousins or brothers of those people. I cannot remember his exact works, but he said that one cannot visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons. I think we can and the time has come when we must. It is only by putting that sort of pressure on the regime can we make these people go back, at least to witness, if not experience, the misery that is going on in their country, which is being brought about by those who have financed their trips to places such as this country.
Wealth and status is all to the coterie, so it is entirely legitimate for us to seek to remove the benefits of education and health care in this country from these people in whatever form they are taking. I also want the business men—whether in South Africa, the UK, Europe or the United States—who are complicit in
propping up the lifestyles of these individuals and the regime itself to be exposed.
Robert Mugabe controls everything: security, the judiciary, the media. We have heard how he uses food as a weapon of political repression. He controls the purse strings. All of his efforts, and those of the people around him, are working towards winning the 2008 election. The only way he can do that is through the combined uses of electoral fraud, terror and, importantly, patronage. Mugabe has handed out farms, as we all know, to senior officials. Recently he has handed out tractors to officials. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield about the great number of cars that have recently appeared in Harare; they had been handed out to senior security officials. How and where did the regime procure those cars and tractors? Those who did such deals with it are part of the problem. That might be a national issue; China might be complicit in such deals—I do not know whether that is the case. If business men from Britain or any other country are brokering such deals, they must be exposed and the source of patronage must dry up.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Sunderland, South in that I believe that urgent action is necessary as playground economics is being practised—the economy is imploding, there is price-cutting by force, and currency is being printed as if it is confetti. That will bring misery upon misery to the Zimbabwean people, and we must act.
John Bercow: Sadly, many Church figures in Zimbabwe have been bought off. Does my hon. Friend agree that when the next history of Zimbabwe is written—hopefully after the collapse of the current bestial regime—one of the great heroes that will feature in it will be Archbishop Pius Ncube?
Mr. Benyon: I absolutely agree. During my entire life, I will probably meet only four or five people like Pius Ncube. He is a truly humble man who has been subjected to the most appalling attacks—we have heard of the latest attack by the regime—and he remains courageous and a model for us all. He has been recognised in some quarters, but I hope that he will be recognised internationally for his extraordinary work. As we applaud him, we must also deplore those who hold prominent Church positions who have played the tune of Mugabe’s regime for too long. They deserve as much excoriation as Pius Ncube deserves praise.
Let me return to the issue of a sporting ban. I was in South Africa in the 1980s. Before I went there, I did not believe that a sporting ban was a particularly effective tool, but when I was there I saw that it was. Mention has been made of banning Zimbabwe from the Olympics and the 2010 World cup. I applaud the Australian Government for simply saying “No”, and our Government can do the same. As I said to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), when someone wears a national shirt they are part of the political world. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle. It is important that there is cross-Government understanding: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, or whichever Department makes decisions on who plays in sporting tournaments throughout the world, must recognise that allowing a Zimbabwean team to visit our country or, even worse, us to play cricket or any other sport in Zimbabwe,
would amount to an enormous endorsement of the regime, and that that would certainly be how it would be received in that country.
What we need is good old-fashioned diplomacy. We have given £2.5 billion in bilateral aid to SADC countries. Their economies are being brought down by the actions of the Zimbabwe regime; nearby countries are beginning to feel the impact of what is happening in Zimbabwe. Our taxpayers’ hard-earned money is being wasted because those countries will not stand up to Mugabe. I am not saying that aid should be cut; on the contrary, I want aid to be increased, especially to countries in the SADC region. However, we must in return have more leverage, and we should use it to try to put some backbone into some of their leaders.
Like many Members, I am hugely disappointed by much of Thabo Mbeki’s record, such as his attitude to HIV and the fact that he has allowed crime to soar. History will judge harshly his tenure as leader of Africa’s strongest country, and the litany of failure will certainly include somewhere very near the beginning of the word “Zimbabwe”.
I hope that this country can take a lead from countries such as Australia, which has taken robust action against the Government of Zimbabwe. We should also applaud people such as Christopher Dell, the courageous US diplomat, and our high commissioner and the whole team in Harare, who do a fantastic job. Christopher Dell’s announcement that ZANU-PF officials’ family members who were being educated in the US would be removed was a big step forward, and one that we should follow.
We can also take a lead in many other ways. The Government like to sound new and fresh, and we have announcements to that effect every day. This issue is an opportunity to be fresh and new. We can end the tiptoeing around the subject and the sense of post-colonial guilt syndrome, which my generation feel is in the past and should not be allowed to affect the issue today. The Prime Minister could make a big difference by announcing that he is not going to Lisbon if Robert Mugabe is going, and that we will have a robust and forthright policy on Zimbabwe in the future.
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