Zimbabwe

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend and I pay tribute to the work of two experienced parliamentarians who did so much for our understanding—Lady Park and Lord Blaker. Not only do we miss them personally but their absence means that we will have to redouble our efforts to keep this issue high in the public mind. In that context, I welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, whose hard-hitting approach is very much needed on these occasions. All eyes are on South Africa and the World Cup, and it is tragic that, because of an incompetent dictatorship dressed up as a power-sharing arrangement, tourists who should be benefiting Zimbabwe’s economy are largely avoiding the country. However, I know that the more determined game parks and resorts are doing their best to attract attention.

The Foreign Office’s country profile for Zimbabwe reports,

“a reduction in the level of political violence”,

following the formation of the cross-party Government in 2009. There is a widespread perception that the return to the US dollar and an upturn in the economy have also helped to create improvement in household incomes. My noble friend mentioned investment, which is increasing. However, that analysis bears close examination, especially in relation to the more vulnerable and low-income groups. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, mentioned the decay in services and communications. The country profile report also contrasts with reports from human rights organisations and the media that white farmers and MDC activists are still being targeted and, in many cases, victimised. One activist in Mashonaland had his house burnt down only a week ago. A local chairman in Harare was abducted while a rally that he was to address was disrupted. As the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, said, most of those attacks are coming from ZANU-PF, but sometimes the police or even the army are directly involved.

The court’s release of Roy Bennett last month was the latest example of the political cat and mouse game. He is a senior member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC and he was due to become Deputy Minister for Agriculture when he was arrested in February 2009. The Government, knowing that such an appointment would wreck their pretence of power-sharing, will appeal against the decision, but their manipulation of the courts makes a farce of the judicial process.

Meanwhile, white farmers are being constantly harassed. Although some are returning, many are being arrested and detained on spurious charges or are still being evicted in favour of pseudo-farmers and ZANU-PF party squatters. Charles Taffs, the Commercial Farmers’ Union vice-president, said last week that eviction of white farmers had intensified over the past 10 days, further threatening Zimbabwe’s fragile food security. He said that Zimbabwe was producing less than 10,000 tonnes of wheat, which is one-third of national requirements, because of the lack of security, farm evictions and electricity blackouts on the farms.

Farm workers are the subject of a telling recent survey by the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe. It may not be representative, but it provides a glimpse of the suffering of those workers, showing the true savagery and oppression of the Mugabe regime. Of the sample surveyed, 24 per cent of farm workers had been held hostage and three in 10 had been abducted. Twenty-five per cent had seen their pets maimed or killed. In 29 per cent of cases, children were forced to watch beatings and a similar percentage of adults were required to intimidate their colleagues. Forty-four per cent had been assaulted. More than half had received death threats. Two-thirds were severely ill treated or psychologically tortured and a similar proportion forced to join ZANU-PF. On one farm alone, farm workers reported a fractured skull, broken feet, abductions, one man being thrown into a fire, bad bruising from rifle butts from police, imprisonment and torture. Some had been in hiding. Some had had their houses looted and others had watched their houses burn down. Those facts, which come from reliable sources, speak for themselves. More than l million farm workers, estimated to be more than half the population on commercial farms, have been displaced over the years by this violence.

While we watch football games and applaud the sporting achievements of many African states, people are suffering silently in Zimbabwe out of sight of the media. Many are destitute, many live in poor housing in Harare and many more have fled to South Africa. In Harare, hundreds of thousands are still displaced following the senseless mass evictions five years ago. Amnesty recently appealed on their behalf for improved conditions and the UN is helping a limited number with legal advice and emergency aid.

The UK is a key donor to the World Food Programme, besides directly assisting British humanitarian agencies such as Oxfam and Save the Children, but could we be doing more? There are more than 3 million refugees and migrants in South Africa, which has benefited from Zimbabwean labourers working on construction sites during the run-up to the World Cup, but the temporary camps are phasing out and there are fears that many people will be forcibly returned. There is always a risk of xenophobic violence. We have already seen examples of it.

The UN has drawn up a programme to resettle up to 60,000 returnees this year and has opened a new office in Bulawayo. Does the Foreign and Commonwealth Office share these anxieties and have they been expressed in Pretoria? I support what my noble friend Lord Best said about the situation of refugees in the United Kingdom, about which I hope we will have time for a debate.

Having worked for non-governmental organisations, I have a particular concern that NGOs in Zimbabwe, including church groups and even student bodies, are being targeted as though they were militant opposition groups. Funds belonging to NGOs that were frozen by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in 2008 have still not been released and several NGOs report problems in obtaining employment permits. Is our embassy speaking up for local NGOs as well as for international NGOs? The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, warned recently that in countries such as Zimbabwe funding shortfalls are,

“jeopardizing the ability of humanitarian organizations”,

to operate.

Human rights NGOs are also being squeezed if they dare to expose corruption. I have a current example, which has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and other noble Lords in the context of Marange diamonds. Last week, Zimbabwean police arrested the head of the Marange-based Centre for Research and Development, Farai Maguwu. The centre has regularly provided information about ongoing human rights abuse to the Kimberley process, which monitors companies in order to prevent trade in blood diamonds. Mr Maguwu is, in effect, being accused of exposing the close relationship with the Government of Mr Abbey Chikane, the Kimberley process monitor. South African firms such as Mbada and Canadile, which have little mining experience, are being used as fronts by the Mugabe Government, but they cannot officially sell the diamonds until Zimbabwe meets the terms of the Kimberley process. Mr Chikane is widely expected to give the green light before the end of this month. Diamonds are reaching Antwerp via Mozambique even now, so the certification scheme, which is highly regarded in Africa, is in danger of being discredited. This story is well documented and is being widely publicised this week. The MDC has called for Mr Maguwu’s immediate release. Will the Government endorse that call and repeat their assurance that they will not support the export of diamonds from Zimbabwe until they are satisfied that there is no evidence of human rights abuse in the mines?

Finally, knowing that the Department for International Development has taken a close interest in constitutional issues and has considerable expertise in this field, and given the possibility of imminent, and even snap, elections immediately after the World Cup, how will the UK Government step up their support, alongside the European Union, for the democratic process that is already under way under the GPA and how will they help to bring confidence to a potentially healthy and constructive civil society?