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Zimbabwe

As he so often does, my hon. Friend reads my mind; I was coming on to that point. We need to make the global political agreement work. We need to make the judgments of the panel enforceable under the judicial system of Zimbabwe. My hon. Friend is a great constitutional lawyer, so he will know that unless one can obtain enforcement of a judgment, there is not much point—I will not say that there is not much point in getting the judgment, but the judgment itself is not the critical thing. Enforcement is critical, and that is why Zimbabwe needs a proper judicial system. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) stated in a report on his recent visit to Zimbabwe:""A land audit that establishes exactly who is in possession of what, as a first step towards a conclusive settlement on this most sensitive of issues, is crucial yet shows no sign of getting off the ground. Nor has Mugabe released all political prisoners, or honoured his commitments to open up the media space. And all the while Zanu PF thugs and militia lurk in the background."" There is real fear in the back of Zimbabwean people's mind that the law and order situation is still highly unpredictable and unsatisfactory. That is why the country needs a general election and a properly, constitutionally and democratically elected Government. As a farmer, I would like to probe some of DFID's policies—that is the information that I hope the Minister will be able to provide today. The hon. Member for City of York said two important things. First, he said that, having examined the matter in forensic detail, he does not think that this country has any further obligations under the Lancaster house agreement, and that, furthermore, the situation is entirely the fault of the ruling political party, which brought about contraventions of the law of that country through the land reforms conducted since 2000. Secondly—on the opposite end of the scale—he said that this country has contributed almost $1 billion to Zimbabwe since independence. That is an important point that we need to keep stressing to the world. Far from abandoning Zimbabwe, we have been a huge supporter and a huge help to that country through its difficult times. I want to probe the Minister about the almost £100 million-worth of aid that we will give Zimbabwe this year. A great deal of it—I have the programmes written down here—will go to shore up Government infrastructure. How effective does he think direct aid to the Zimbabwean Government has been? Is it bringing about a real improvement in the structure of government? Would we do better by channelling more of the aid through non-governmental organisations, which are able to reach the kind of areas that the Zimbabwean Government, let alone the British Government, are not able to reach? Only two programmes are to do with food assistance and farming reform, and I wonder whether more cannot be done to encourage the kind of things that I have been outlining—planting crops but doing it better—at least on community and community co-operative lands. The Minister will talk about the conservation farming system, and that is great, but we need to go beyond that and teach farmers how to plant crops properly and how to grow them, and how to get farms recapitalised so that food production starts to increase. Marketing pathways need to be re-established so that farmers can get their food to market and, above all, people must have the wherewithal to be able to buy it. Although the economic situation in Zimbabwe is improving, most people in most situations are still unable to pay for ordinary food. They simply do not have the ability to pay for the food that is now in the shops. I would like to hear from the Minister how he envisages the situation developing, how effective our aid to Zimbabwe is, whether we are right to give aid directly to the Zimbabwean Government and how he envisages the global political agreement panning out. Does the Minister think that we are able to put any pressure on President Zuma of South Africa? As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton and others have said, President Zuma was pressurised hard during his recent visit. Were there any diplomatic signs that that pressure on the South African President had an effect? He is able to bring more pressure to bear on Zimbabwe than anybody else in the world. What the Minister and everybody else will be able to glean from this debate is that the British people care deeply about what happens in Zimbabwe. We want to see an alleviation of the situation in which the former bread basket of Africa is not able even to feed itself and more than 2 million people are today dependent on food aid.