Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
50-59)
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP, MR
MARK LOWCOCK
AND MR
JOHN DENNIS
23 FEBRUARY 2010
Q50 Chairman: Thank you, Minister,
for coming to give evidence. This is the final session on our
inquiry into the situation in Zimbabwe. Would you—for the
record—introduce your team?
Mr Thomas: Mark
Lowcock, who is the Director General for Country Programmes, is
on my left, and on my right is John Dennis, who is the Head of
the Zimbabwe Desk at the Foreign Office.
Q51 Chairman: Thank you for that.
As you know, we visited Zimbabwe a couple or so weeks ago. I will
start by saying that we have an extract from an Economist
article saying that, since we left, things have deteriorated including
with strikes. It says things like: the unity government is "as
good as dead" and that Harare is "abuzz" with talk
of early elections and so forth. What is the political situation?
Has it changed that dramatically in the last couple of weeks?
Perhaps that would be the first question to ask, and then a couple
more will arise from it.
Mr Thomas: I do not think the
political situation in Zimbabwe can ever have been described as
easy. We have always expected that there would be difficult periods
between the formation of the Inclusive Government and eventually
free and fair elections taking place. You are obviously aware
that there have been reports of both strike action over salaries
and of other tensions within the Inclusive Government. Whether
or not it leads to elections sooner rather than later, I am not
in a position to make that judgment, frankly, and I do not think
any of us are in a position to make that judgment. We knew that
the period between the formation of the government and elections
would be a protracted and difficult period, and events are bearing
that out.
Q52 Chairman: Have you seen this
article from The Economist?
Mr Thomas: I have not seen that
article.
Q53 Chairman: Is that an accurate
reflection of the current situation? That is worse than the situation
we would have observed three weeks ago. Saying things like the
Government of National Unity is "as good as dead." and
"Mr Zuma appears to agree that the unity government has become
a sham" but that he does not want any trouble before the
World Cup. It says that Mr Tsvangirai has given up all his demands,
other than to try to see if he can get space for free and fair
elections. There is then this "indigenisation" rule,
saying that every company worth more than half a million dollars
needs to provide a 51% stake to black Zimbabweans—which
is a blatantly racist policy. That, even in relation to three
weeks ago, appears to be a serious degradation of the situation.
Mr Thomas: I have no sense that
the President of South Africa has given up on the mediation process
that SADC[1]
have in place and have under way. Our sense, certainly, is that
the key players in the Inclusive Government have not given up
the sense of the work programme to which the government is committed.
As I say, there are tensions at the heart of the Inclusive Government.
As we all recognise, political power continues to be very contested.
Inevitably, when you have a situation like that there are going
to be moments of high tension as well as moments where tensions
are relatively lessened. I think we are probably in one of the
tenser periods at the moment.
Q54 Chairman: We will explore this
in more detail, but for the ordinary people, some of whom at least
were getting access to education and health and other services,
has the position changed significantly in the last few weeks?
Or, in spite of those background difficulties and the strikes,
are those services still being delivered?
Mr Thomas: There has been an improvement
in the delivery of basic services, as I think you had the chance
to see for yourselves when you were in Zimbabwe. Having said that,
there are huge challenges still in terms of the delivery of those
services. The crisis in terms of access to healthcare which was
at the heart of the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has not gone
away, albeit there are more health workers in place. In terms
of your specific question, our sense is that basic services are
still in place, but they are very basic, and there is still a
much longer transition to more recognisable, good quality health,
education and other services to take place. The Department staff
in Zimbabwe continue to look at what else we can do to improve
the quality of those basic services, but that is very much a job
in hand, as I suspect you will have seen for yourself when you
were there.
Q55 Chairman: The final political
point: a call for early elections. That was in the air when we
were there. The counter-argument was that you could not possibly
have free and fair elections if they were early because the register
does not exist—and to the extent that it does exist, it
is completely stacked to the benefit of ZANU-PF. Is this call
for early elections a realistic call? Is it achievable? Is it
desirable?
Mr Thomas: It is difficult to
believe that free and fair elections would take place if they
took place in the short term. As you say, there are substantial
changes that are required, in terms of thinking through issues
around voter education, constituency boundaries, the behaviour
of the security forces, the role of the diaspora in getting the
right to vote. It is difficult to see how free and fair elections
could take place in the short term, certainly.
Q56 Chairman: That would imply that
you think more time is needed to get those issues straight.
Mr Thomas: Certainly, our view
is that what was included in the Global Political Agreement (GPA)
in terms of changes that were going to be needed has not happened
as yet. The Electoral Commission is not up and functioning yet,
albeit its head has been appointed—although not, I believe,
formally confirmed. We would want to see the Electoral Commission
being able to go about its work, completing the process of reform
that everybody recognises is necessary if free and fair elections
are going to take place.
Q57 Chairman: Mr Dennis, do you want
to add any comments?
Mr Dennis: I have no comments
to add, thank you.
Q58 Richard Burden: One of the pots
of support that DFID has been providing has been to the Office
of the Prime Minister. We understand that the purpose of that
funding is around enabling that as an office to fulfil its role
under the GPA. When we met Prime Minister Tsvangirai over there,
he felt that that DFID funding had been particularly useful in
fulfilling the obligation to the GPA but he felt more could be
done and extra support to his office would be well used, in particular,
on the same sort of areas: helping the Prime Minister in his role
to lead executive business in parliament and so on. Are there
any plans to increase that support?
Mr Thomas: Certainly, if further
approaches for assistance were made to us, be it by the Prime
Minister or indeed any other ministry that is committed to reform
and to a pro-poor agenda, then we would look at them very sympathetically.
As you say, our support is designed to enable the Office of the
Prime Minister to carry out the sort of normal functions that
a head of state's office would, including oversight of the budget,
making sure that the different ministries are following through
on the government's agreed work plan, and helping to resolve disputes
between government departments were they to happen. Certainly,
that has been the purpose behind granting the assistance that
we have done. We also, as you may be aware, granted assistance
to a number of other departments to help them carry out the basic
functions of their ministries, not least the Ministry of Finance
to help them with the budgeting process.
Q59 Richard Burden: In terms of the
level of that support, if a case were made that increases in that
would be consistent with the objectives, would that be something
that we would be prepared to look at?
Mr Thomas: Absolutely. We have
increased our aid programme to Zimbabwe over the last 12 months
from £49 million to £60 million. Of course, we are looking
for the measures that can have most impact most quickly in terms
of helping the Zimbabweans get access to better services. Clearly,
helping key ministries be better functioning so that they can
drive that process, is sensible. When a prime minister or other
key minister asks for assistance, of course we always look at
that sympathetically. We would have to make a judgment about its
relative merit as against other programme asks, but we certainly
would not rule it out by any means.
1 South African Development Community Back
| 
