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Zimbabwe

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 to see. 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. But 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 own wealth and position being 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 being 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. 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 this 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 if 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.