Ambassador of The Republic of Zimbabwe HE Mr S S Mumbengegwi, 14.3.05 Private Meeting
Summary of talk about Zimbabwe's foreign policy.
Zimbabwe has been guided by the principles of the sovereign equality of states. The main priority in the early years of Zimbabwe's independence was to defeat apartheid in South Africa. The countries of the region then established the Southern African Development Co-ordination SADC) Conference in 1980 with the objective of reducing their dependence on South Africa through regional economic integration. The solidarity established among these countries as a result of their co-operative activities has shaped the close relations Zimbabwe enjoys within the region – especially Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana by offering political, diplomatic, moral, material and financial support to Zimbabwe's Liberation Movements.
Within the wider context of African Union (AU), Zimbabwe has worked towards the realisation of the continental body's objectives, which include the peaceful settlement of disputes, whether intra-state or inter-state. Zimbabwe did not therefore hesitate to contribute, in terms of material and personnel, to AU/UN peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Angola and Rwanda. Because of the outstanding performance of Zimbabwe's troops and police officers, Zimbabwe has been asked to contribute Force Commanders to some of these missions – and is very proud of this recognition that its men and women serving on these missions from both the AU and UN.
Zimbabwe's faith in the UN is based on the fact that the UN provides a forum where all nations, whether big or small have an equal voice, which can be heard in the General Assembly. The UN also provides the hope that it may be possible for nations to work together to achieve peace, human dignity, justice, and economic progress. However, the UN appears to favour the powerful few and Zimbabwe therefore fully supports the demands that are being made for the reform of the United Nations, especially its Security Council, in order to make it more democratic.
In 1980 President Mugabe won the British organised elections after elections in which the liberation movement members were described by the western media as 'terrorists'. However, throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s Zimbabwe was held up as an example of a well-governed African country. All this changed when Zimbabwe addressed the most burning national grievance which had fuelled the liberation war and still remained unresolved: the land question. Land ownership remained as it was under colonial rule when the original dispossession, at gunpoint, of the black majority hadn’t been regarded as inhuman undemocratic or unjust.
In the 1960s the British government paid out £200 million to resolve the Kenya land question. Zimbabwe, however, got £40 million twenty years later when $2 billion was thought to be necessary. In 1979 Lord Carrington made a statement that costs for resolving the land question in Zimbabwe "would be very substantial indeed, well beyond the capacity of any individual donor country". Therefore the provision of £40 million, while welcome, was paltry and inadequate. The British Prime Minister, John Major, sent a mission to Zimbabwe to review the position. In 1996 the Mission reported good progress and recommended that further assistance be given to complete the land reform programme. But in the 1997 elections John Major's Conservative Party lost to Tony Blair's New Labour Party.
Mr Blair's Government totally rejected Britain's Lancaster House commitment to assist Zimbabwe with the land reform and Clare Short wrote:
I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has social responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised, not colonisers.
This 'shooting from the hip' comment was unfortunate and came at a time of growing restlessness among landless Zimbabweans. In 1996/7 the traditional chief and spiritual leaders of the Svosve Community moved into unutilised parts of commercial farms as a result of their frustration at the slow pace of land reform. Aware of the rising tide of frustration, the Government of Zimbabwe, under the framework of the Land Acquisition Act (1992) had already started conducting extensive negotiations with all stakeholders, including white commercial farmers. The following criteria for land acquisition was agreed:
- derelict land
- under-utilised land
- land owned by absentee landlords
- land from farmers with more than one farm or oversized farms
- land adjacent to communal areas
Zimbabwe legally designated nearly 1,500 white-owned farms for the resettlement of landless peasants. British reaction was predictably hostile. The land ownership register revealed that some of the political and economic heavyweights connected to the British establishment owned large tracts of land in Zimbabwe as absentee landlords. This was in addition to the 4,000 white farmers, mainly of British extraction, who owned more than 75% of the best arable land in Zimbabwe – a country of 13 million people. When colonisers seized land there wasn’t an outcry over the violation of the human and property rights of the indigenous blacks – but now the British authorities became the champions of human rights now that their colonial injustices were being corrected and perceived as their kith and kin losing their colonial heritage of white privileges. The black majority, who were the victims, were now portrayed as the villains.
After efforts to engage in dialogue with the British Government had failed Zimbabwe started to appeal to the wider international community for assistance. The co-called 'land invasions' did not start in earnest until March 2000. This bilateral issue with the United Kingdom was condemned on human rights grounds and allegations were internationalised rather than kept as a purely bilateral issue. Zimbabwe totally rejects these baseless allegations which are being used as a smokescreen to cover the agenda of regime change and reversal of the land reform programme. On the allegations of human rights, no-one, not even the British government, has ever come forward to say whose rights have been violated. The UK and its allies have consistently failed in their desire to get the UN Human Rights Commission to condemn Zimbabwe for the alleged human rights violations.
Zimbabwe has been a democratic country since its independence in 1980 holding five parliamentary elections (1980, 85, 90, 95 and 2000).
Zimbabwe is determined never to be a colony again.
A robust discussion followed the speech.