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Queen's Speech

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who is no longer present, both of whom spoke about Zimbabwe, will feel that my comments add a little support to their expert speeches. Mugabe controls just about everything in Zimbabwe except two things: Parliament, where Tsvangirai’s party has a small majority; and, since the past few days, elements of the army, which have been rioting because of low pay. Mugabe proposes to retain control of the police, the media, the intelligence service, the electoral commission, the health service and many other important bodies. However, the Administration is approaching a state of collapse. Inflation is running at 231 million per cent. For many weeks now there has been a state of deadlock about the membership of the Government. Members of SADC are pressing for a compromise in the sharing of ministerial posts, involving in particular a division between Mugabe and Tsvangirai at the head of the department of home affairs. This would mean in practice that Mugabe would have a more powerful say in that department than Tsvangirai, since Mugabe has been running it, among others, for so long; and if the SADC suggestion were adopted, it would almost certainly lead to chaos as Mugabe would continue to have the major say in its affairs. Mugabe is a world champion procrastinator. It is one of his most successful means of winning his arguments. He agreed at an early stage in negotiations on the broad principles on which the Government would be constructed, but he very carefully did not commit himself to any particular appointments. The process of having derived credit from the agreement in principle has left him free to negotiate ad infinitum, as is his normal way, about the things which really matter; namely, who gets what ministry. SADC has become bored and is keen to reach a compromise on any account. That is the situation we find ourselves in and I think it is what Mugabe has been aiming at all the way along. SADC members have shown themselves collectively incapable of engaging with this crisis, which is effectively a crisis about the future of the Government. This is largely because Thomas Salomao, the Secretary-General of SADC, has behaved as an agent of Mugabe, orchestrating discussion—he has been doing so for some years—to protect the incumbent regime and drafting SADC communiqués from a ZANU-PF point of view. Another example of incompetence relates to the outbreak of cholera, to which the noble Lord, Lord Owen, referred, which has now led, in a short time, to nearly 600 deaths and 11,000 sick. Cholera is not normally a difficult disease to control but it is spreading fast in Zimbabwe because the sewerage and drainage systems are in a state of breakdown and there is a serious shortage of drinking water and the relevant medical drugs. Many regional leaders, already intimidated by Mugabe, lack the political will to stand up and break away from the collective approach in SADC that has become an extension of ZANU-PF propaganda. I am not saying that every senior member of SADC takes that view, but the majority do and the rest do not seem prepared to stand up at the relevant time. It is apparent from the continuing arrests and violence being meted out to political and civil society activists inside Zimbabwe when they stand up to the regime, that there is no good faith on the part of ZANU-PF as a whole in its negotiations over power sharing. Although he is Prime Minister-designate under the inter-party political agreement, Tsvangirai is still denied a passport and only very complicated arrangements make it possible for him to travel and present his case and to plead for international action to assist the people of Zimbabwe. This is an extension of the device that was used for years when Morgan Tsvangirai was prevented from travelling because he was on trumped-up treason charges. Yet South Africa seems to be colluding with this ploy rather than insisting that Harare issue Mr Tsvangirai with a passport immediately. I find it deeply disappointing that from so many quarters where there has been a refusal to put any pressure on Mugabe, pressure is now being piled on to Tsvangirai and the MDC to enter into a vague and dangerously ill-defined power sharing Administration. It is already a major concession to ZANU-PF that the MDC is prepared to join a power-sharing Administration. Reliable analysts calculate that Morgan Tsvangirai won 56 per cent of the vote in the presidential election, which is a clear and decisive win. By rights, he should now be the undisputed President. It ought to be a matter of great concern to parliamentarians everywhere that MPs arriving for their swearing-in to the new Parliament had to run the gauntlet of police at the doors of Parliament who had a ““wanted”” list of 17 MDC MPs. This was a crude attempt to whittle away the majority enjoyed by the mainstream MDC. It is a great tribute to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC as a whole that despite brutality, despite being banned from newspapers, television and radio, which are all state-controlled, the message still got through to the people and they refused to be intimidated when it came to the vote. If the MDC had resorted to violence, the international community would have intervened. It is wrong that only those who resort to violence should gain decisive external support. Even the Elders, Kofi Annan, President Carter and Graça Machel, the wife of Mandela, have urged the MDC to make further concessions to ZANU-PF and to try and resolve their differences from within the government ranks. I have to say that this seems a mistake. ZANU-PF has adopted a policy of all take and no give. Sadly, and perhaps in frustration at the sense of impotence, much of the world has bought into that and advocates giving in to the ever more unreasonable demands of ZANU-PF. This is not only a recipe for disaster in Zimbabwe; it is a recipe for disaster in the world. Earlier this week, speaking in Senegal, Morgan Tsvangirai said: "““Our vision as a party is to set a precedent on our continent: a precedent of fighting dictatorships through democratic means””." President Khama of Botswana has pointed out that what SADC and the AU ought to be pressing for is a rerun of the presidential elections under international supervision and that if Mugabe says no to that, SADC should cut off relations with Harare and the AU should follow. Botswana goes so far as to call for the imposition by neighbouring countries of an embargo on fuel exports to Zimbabwe, claiming that this would very quickly dislodge Mugabe from power. For as long as Mugabe was able to rig the elections, SADC and the AU told us that it was for the people of Zimbabwe to decide their future. Now that the people of Zimbabwe have voted and the outcome is unfavourable to Mugabe, we are told that we must accept concessions to him that are demanded by SADC leaders, concessions that are rejected by the majority, democratically elected representatives of the people of Zimbabwe. It seems to me both unjust and dangerous that all the pressure should be put on the MDC, the party that won the elections and that cannot be held responsible for the multiple crises of corruption in governance, health, agriculture and the economy. Simply because Tsvangirai is a reasonable man who cares for the people of Zimbabwe, more and more pressure is piled on him, and he is an easy target. Meanwhile, Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF hardliners, who remain defiant and unmoved by the people’s suffering, get an easy ride. Mugabe has a record dating back to before Zimbabwe’s independence of dealing in bad faith and subverting any trust placed in him during negotiations. It would be foolhardy in the extreme and a betrayal of the trust placed in the MDC by the people of Zimbabwe, who voted despite intimidation and threat of reprisal, if the MDC were now to enter into any power-sharing arrangement solely in the fond hope that Mugabe might suddenly change the habits of his long lifetime and cede power. Our priority must be to alleviate the suffering and threat to life resulting from ZANU-PF’s ruinous and callous policies, and we must use every means at our disposal to isolate Mugabe from the means of patronage by which he clings to power. Not long ago, great hopes were placed on SADC resolving this problem. Indeed, the SADC treaty calls for this. But now the time has come for the world to move on to the African Union and the UN. They are the two organisations that have shown some inclination to respond. Time has moved on, and there might now be greater international support for the type of action proposed earlier this year at the UN Security Council. Sadly, those efforts were thwarted as result of lobbying by South Africa last time.