Zimbabwe

Richard Burden Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I, too, thank the House for this brief opportunity to debate some of the International Development Committee’s reflections following our visit to Zimbabwe in February. I endorse what the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) said about it being important that we went. Before we went, there was nervousness in some quarters about whether we would be sending mixed messages simply by going there. We were conscious that if things went wrong our visit could be seen as some kind of endorsement of the Mugabe regime or a weakening of the international community’s resolve; we were firm that we could not let that be the case, and I do not think it was.

It is important that we have a clear position on the gross abuses of human rights that went on there and are still going on, and that we make our position absolutely clear. However, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, and as the report underlines, Zimbabwe has huge potential as a country, but also has huge needs in human terms. In October, the United Nations Development Programme released its annual human development index, which puts the country last on the indices of education, health and the income of nations. According to UNICEF’s mid-year report, which was published in July, Zimbabwe had the most severe health-related emergency of 2010—a major measles outbreak in which there were 7,754 suspected cases and 517 people died. That was reported in 61 of the country’s 62 districts. The report states:

“Basic social services, such as access to safe water and coverage of immunization programmes, remain a cause for concern.”

We spent some time looking at those areas when we were in Zimbabwe in February. The report also notes that although schools remain open, the quality of learning “continues to be compromised”, often by

“teachers’ low morale, lack of teaching and learning material, and the poor infrastructure of most schools.”

In a whole range of areas, it is absolutely clear that the country has considerable needs.

UNICEF projects a final funding gap of $44,260,863, which is 40% of its needs. It states:

“If funding requirements are not met the following critical activities may not take place: improving the management of pneumonia and diarrhoea in children under five years, community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM), nutrition surveillance, emergency safe water and sanitation, life skills for HIV/AIDS prevention and health promotion in schools, and the protection and promotion of the rights of children within IDP and migrant-sending communities.”

Zimbabwe is an area of massive need and the evidence of our eyes suggests that we are right to be in there. We have made some suggestions about how the Department for International Development’s programmes could be improved or tweaked, but by and large the impact there is positive and we are focusing on the right things.

Let me endorse what the right hon. Gentleman said about the protracted relief programme. We saw various projects for which funding had started through that programme and it is clear that an impact is being made, but a number of interlocutors we came across were clearly concerned about the administration and costs of the programme. They had other concerns too, and this is where our report almost argues against itself. It says that we want to be clear that the audit procedures for the programme are robust enough, but one concern that was raised with us was whether, given the use of intermediary organisations, funding was being mediated in the right way and whether the voices of grass-roots community organisations that really know what needs to be done, and how it should be done, are getting through the bureaucracy so that programmes can be approved and money got to where it is needed. I do not think we have any great pearls of wisdom that enable us to say this or that must be done to the protracted relief programme—overall, I am comfortable with the shape of it—but I hope that DFID looks at whether the mechanisms for operating the programme are as good as they should be and whether they are getting resources to the places they need to go, and in the best way.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I have only just arrived in the Chamber and realise that this issue may already have been addressed. While in Zimbabwe, what information did members of the Committee garner from the ambassador about the potential for the neighbouring states to increase their role in effectively achieving a better solution for Zimbabwe? Those states are nearby and have a deep interest in doing exactly that.

[Richard Burden]

I hope to conclude my remarks by saying something about neighbouring states, because their role is crucial. The hon. Gentleman asks about the ambassador’s views on the matter. He has provided a briefing, but I have to confess that I have not seen it. Perhaps the Minister will give us a few ideas about the ambassador’s views during his winding-up speech. I shall return to some of the issues on the role of neighbouring states.

We need to engage and we are engaging. By and large, the focus of that is positive. However, it absolutely must be accompanied by our ensuring that measures are taken that express the international community’s—I was going to say displeasure, but it sounds a bit weak—views on what the ZANU-PF regime has been doing and continues to do. We must be clear about that.

Again, the right hon. Member for Gordon made it clear that this is an area where Mugabe uses the media inside Zimbabwe completely to distort what the measures that the international community is adopting are all about. While we were there, it was put about time and again that, somehow, the international community is taking action against the people of Zimbabwe. In many ways, the term “sanctions” is a misnomer for what we are doing there. There are targeted measures against individuals and organisations with a direct and responsible role in what goes on. Large amounts of cash and aid go in—probably not enough, as we have heard from UNICEF—that are directed, in the best way we can achieve, to assisting the people of Zimbabwe.

It is important that the measures taken against individuals who are responsible for some quite ghastly acts in that country remain in place and should be removed—indeed, there is an argument that they should be increased—only when we see clear and demonstrable steps towards democracy and respect for human rights. All the indications are that we are a long way from that.

Many of us who had not been to Zimbabwe before were quite surprised that in many ways we did not see the chaos that we perhaps thought we would see. Not only does that country have massive natural resources and massive potential, but we could see in Bulawayo and elsewhere that if the country were able to get itself together, had an economy that worked and had the right kind of governance, it could turn around really quickly.

The infrastructure that had been built up over many years was still there in many instances. There have been major steps forward. Since the dollarisation of the economy, the work of Tendai Biti has been really useful in putting Zimbabwe’s economy on a more rational basis. However, again, there is a dual view of what is going on there: the chaos that perhaps some of us expected to see was not there, yet we could see that the impact of the land seizures had undermined the economy and caused genuine suffering on a scale that is unacceptable. Just before we went to Zimbabwe, some Committee members saw the film “Mugabe and the White African”, which I recommend to hon. Members because it very graphically illustrates the human cost to and, indeed, bravery of some Zimbabweans in standing up to the Mugabe regime.

The land seizures continue, and a recent report by ZimOnline exposes the reality of them. The President and his wife Grace are said to own 14 farms, spanning at least 16,000 hectares. All ZANU-PF’s 56 politburo members, 98 MPs and 35 elected and unelected senators were allegedly allocated farms, and 10 provincial governors have seized farms, with four being multiple owners. Sixteen supreme court and high court judges own farms, too.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Not only is there violence against farmers but all farm workers have been driven away, so there is now almost no production on those farms which, like Zimbabwe, were massively productive. I urge the Government, wherever we can, to help to obtain an audit so that we can get those farms moving. The issue is not only who owns those farms but getting production going, because Zimbabwe should not be starving when it is such a fertile country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. The way the land seizures have worked is wrong in so many respects. It makes make little economic sense, for the reason that he mentions, and it goes under the title of “land reform”, which is another huge misnomer. It invokes an image of land being taken from people who should not have it, do not use it properly or got it illegitimately and then redistributed to the people of Zimbabwe, but all the evidence is that that has just not happened. It has been redistributed to an elite, who have not used the land’s capacity as they should.

All that does not take away from the fact that land reform is a real issue, and that it needs to be confronted. I suspect that if my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, he will say something about that, because the all-party Africa group has looked in some depth at the complicated questions of what land reform needs to be, and at the challenges that we have to face.

The land seizures are unacceptable, wrong and, as we saw in the film to which I referred, in many ways inhuman both to the owners of the land and, yes, to the workers who owed their livelihood to it. That is a challenge for us in the international community and, to return to the point that the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) made, to Zimbabwe’s neighbours, in particular. When Mugabe just ignores and cocks a snook at the decisions of the SADC tribunal, that is a problem not just for the people whose farms and livelihoods have been taken away, but for southern Africa as a whole and for the credibility of SADC itself. SADC countries need to face up to that, but most of all South Africa needs to face up to the fact that, in terms of securing leverage and change in Zimbabwe, its role is absolutely crucial. So far, it has not exercised that role as assertively as many of us would like.

Zimbabwe is a country with massive potential, and I endorse what the right hon. Member for Gordon says about elections. I want to see elections in Zimbabwe, but they must be free and fair. We are a long way from that, and it is not always easy for everybody to talk about the impediments to it. In September, an article in The Guardian mentioned how in a recent interview Morgan Tsvangirai seemed to have rather more confidence in the coalition of which he was a part than the right hon. Gentleman who leads the Liberal Democrats has in his. It was quite an amusing article, but it had a serious point, which was that Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have to walk a tightrope. In the ministries for which they are responsible, they must deliver for the people of Zimbabwe as best they can. Walking that tightrope keeps them there and active, and for some of their supporters and members, it keeps them alive. They must work with people who have been responsible for their persecution for many years and, at the same time, they must retain their independence, build their base and try to build a functioning democracy in Zimbabwe. That is a pretty fearsome tightrope to have to walk. They and the people of Zimbabwe need our help to do so.

I am convinced that we must maintain the dual approach that we have adopted of targeted measures that are appropriate and effective against members of the ZANU-PF regime that have brought the country to ruin, combined with an aid and assistance programme that focuses on the real needs of the people. That programme must be responsive to the voices of the people of Zimbabwe and must address their very real humanitarian problems. It must boost the economy of Zimbabwe so that it can achieve its potential. If Zimbabwe achieves that potential, its role in southern Africa will be very positive and it really should have that role. It behoves us all to do what we can to ensure that that happens.