---

Zimbabwe

My Lords, it takes a lot of time to prepare a two-minute speech, and we have heard an enormous amount of wisdom packed into an amazingly short and brisk debate. This is no place for an opposition wind-up speech in the usual sense and I simply ask the following questions. First, where, in the Government’s view, do we now turn? Can the Minister give us any glimmers of hope? Clearly, things are changing. There are growing splits within ZANU-PF. How clear is it to this Government that the senior party leaders of ZANU-PF are really fed up with the ageing tyrant and his policies of terror and their effects, or is he going to outmanoeuvre them yet again? Secondly, at least SADC, the Southern African Development Community, seems in a way to have woken up with the appointment of Mbeki to mediate between the parties. Perhaps, as noble Lords have indicated, this will lead nowhere as usual, but at least Zimbabwe is now seen as a SADC issue—and not before time. Is this the opportunity for real pressures of a new kind to be developed? Can the Minister give us some thoughts on that? Thirdly—I note that this is more of a hope than a fact—the whole Commonwealth, which Zimbabwe left in 2003, has a stronger role and voice to offer in giving backbone and resolve to Zimbabwe’s neighbours before that country drags them all down. Like the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and others, I can never understand—nor, incidentally, can our overseas partners—why we here do not play the Commonwealth card more vigorously. We have one of the richest and most powerful transcontinental networks in the world and we should make much more use of it. Finally, there are the international institutions—the EU, the UN and perhaps the G8, as the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, suggested in initiating this excellent short debate. The EU has sanctions on travel by Zimbabwean ruling personnel, as we know, but frankly these sanctions keep on being breached. They were breached yet again in Belgium the other day. They should be extended to whole families and they should be much tougher. We should like to hear what propositions the Government have on that front. As for the UN Security Council, I know that HMG try to keep raising the issue, but they should go on trying, and trying again to raise a matter that may not yet be one of international peace and security, but which could become so in this network world if the whole of southern Africa is infected, as it probably will be. It is the people of Zimbabwe—there are still many brave ones left—in whose hands the escape from this appalling downward spiral lies. That nation must save itself. We here should not be deterred by propaganda or lies from acting at every point we can. We would be failing in our duty if we did not stand ready to help, and support to our utmost, the people of Zimbabwe in their deep torment and suffering as they face the collapse of their nation.