Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, all of us in this House owe the most reverend Primate a debt of gratitude for initiating this debate. Many of us who live and work much of the time in Africa owe him an even greater debt of gratitude for the practical work he has done on the ground in that continent. And it is about the practice of reconciliation and the challenges that arise from it that I shall say a few words this afternoon.

In my experience, culture and language lie at the heart of the effective practice of reconciliation. I was christened and brought up in the eastern region of the Gold Coast—Ghana, as it became. We are Akan peoples and we set great store by symbols: we call them the adinkra symbols. The symbol of reconciliation is of the knot that binds people together after differences. The knot symbolises reconciliation, peacebuilding and forgiveness, and we call it the mpatapo. When one thinks of that symbol and of the knot that binds, it is a knot of common humanity, the humanity that we all share. That common bond exists in the South African principle, in and among the Xhosa and the Zulu peoples, of ubuntu: we are what we are because of others. It is for us too in our British tradition, is it not? It is what John Donne referred to when he said, “No man is an island”. We are interdependent.

Reconciliation in the African tradition is symbolised and represented in that way, but reconciliation, by virtue of its roots in culture and language, is not easy. Identity goes to the heart of so much of the human condition and identity, and a sense of identity lies at the heart of so much conflict. I do not think, frankly, that we in this country, at this time, are immune from that. The role of identity in the debates we are having round Brexit cannot be ignored.

So identity is very important, and as we look at the practice of reconciliation I want to share one particular conflict in Africa today, in Cameroon, where identity around language lies at the root of conflict between Anglophone and Francophone. In the past three months, not only have we faced a situation in which, according to the Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States at the Security Council just last Thursday, more than 400,000 people have been displaced, we also know from the UN High Representative, who spoke at that same session, that more than 10,000 have now been displaced to Nigeria. Many thousands have been killed. In the past three months, three Christian ministers have lost their lives in the conflict—the Reverend Attoh, the Reverend Wesco and the Reverend Ondari; a Ghanaian, an American and a Kenyan—all victims of a conflict based on linguistic discrimination and a flawed plebiscite and process of independence but all men of peace, actively promoting reconciliation. Reconciliation is a hard and tough business. It is not a soft option. We have to be prepared for it, and we have to apply the resources that are necessary to practise it meaningfully.

I will say a few words, if I may, about resources. When Archbishop Tutu inaugurated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, that was part of a process that had been ongoing for many years, including at the height of the conflict, in which many on both sides of your Lordships’ House and in the other place were actively engaged—my noble friend Lord Anderson referred to this. The current Minister of State at the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, Alistair Burt, was very much part of the fellowship at the time that underpinned a discussion between people of faith—all faiths—in South Africa and in the UK. That process, which went back those many years, required people who spoke Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans to sit down at a table and not just speak in their own languages but listen to each other in their own languages. Effective communication, when it comes to reconciliation, demands that we do not just speak but that we listen. British diplomats were able to participate in that because at that time we gave real attention to linguistic skills when we trained our diplomats. It cost money but, because our diplomats based at that difficult time in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town were able to speak Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans, they were able to make a real difference. If we do not invest today in the nuts and bolts, including language training in our foreign service, we will not be able to marshal the skills that will enable us effectively to promote reconciliation.

I put my hands up: I am a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury—I have the scars to show it—and I have the form: we have not always given the Foreign Office the money that it needs. But if we do not apply resources to this and we are not prepared to pool resources to underpin the work of the proposed joint reconciliation unit, it will not work. I make the case for pooled budgets. They are absolutely vital, for reasons that a number of noble Lords have touched on. Our Army and defence forces have a crucial role to play in the business of reconciliation in supporting the Kofi Annan school out in the field. It should be a cause of concern to noble Lords that the fastest-growing military and diplomatic presence in Africa today is that of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. It should be a cause of concern that we are not applying resources to enable our own military to contribute to reconciliation and peacekeeping. That will not happen unless we pool budgets. That is my experience of government, and I do not believe that the situation has changed. It is not just a question of DfID, the Foreign Office or the MoD spending the money, and each working within its own silo; we have to pool budgets in order to promote reconciliation effectively. I wholeheartedly support the most reverend Primate’s proposal, but I urge the Government in adopting it—as I hope they will—to ensure that the Treasury backs it by requiring pooled budgets upon which it is possible for all the departments, having made the case, to draw.

As I draw my remarks to a conclusion, I will make these final points. We have heard movingly of the Coventry experience. As a young man, I was often challenged and inspired—and sometimes irritated, I have to say—by Canon Paul Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral, who was a remarkable man. He said something which has stayed with me always and is so profoundly true: reconciliation must be built on truth. It is not easy, but he was right to remind us of that. But I have also learned that reconciliation will not endure without justice. In 2014 Archbishop Tutu, the Nobel laureate who initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was reflecting, honestly, on its operations. He said one of the reasons why South Africa had suffered and was suffering—as it does today—in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which achieved so much, was because it had not effectively addressed one of its central recommendations, which was for reparations and resources to address the hurt and damage that the process of reconciliation had uncovered, and that as a result of that, reconciliation itself was threatened. We need to underpin work on reconciliation with work to deliver economic and social justice. That is the answer to the conundrum that the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, touched on. We have to be able to deliver to the Army in its work on peacebuilding, but we also have to deliver a process of economic reform and distribution of resources that underpins social and economic justice because, without that, peace cannot and will not endure. It is not one or the other; it is all those things working together.

That is the extent of the challenge. In relation to Cameroon, I hope that the Minister will indicate in his reply how the UK Government intend to act to promote reconciliation there. As our own representative at the UN, Jonathan Allen, said in the Security Council just last Thursday,

“words alone will not improve things”.

We have had plenty of words about Cameroon. But when the bishops and the imams tried to come together on 22 November, there was not the support in the Anglophone conference to enable them to meet. The Government of Cameroon had not created an environment where it was possible for that conference to build and assist in the delivery of a process of reconciliation, so the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group and our membership of it must act in this area.

We cannot continue just to rely on words and exhortation. Reconciliation demands activism on the part of civil society and government, and not words alone. When we have that, then perhaps we will have met the call that Martin Luther King reflected when he called for a world in which—and in this, he was of course reflecting Amos’s original call—justice rolls down like the waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream.