Iden Wetherell
As Commonwealth leaders meet in Durban this weekend, relations between Harare and London, which have been plummeting since the election of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997, are at a new low. Calls for Zimbabwe to be expelled from the association of former British colonies for human rights abuses are mounting.
The two countries have been trading blows this week with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe accusing Blair of heading a “gangster regime” and the British refusing to apologise for what Mugabe has chosen to depict as an officially inspired “attack” on him by gay activists during a recent visit to London.
Mugabe claims Blair and British secret service agency MI5 colluded with the gay militants to embarrass him in retaliation for his land acquisition policy.
Clearly rattled by the attempt of British agit-prop group Outrage!, led by Peter Tatchell, to effect a citizen’s arrest on him as he left his hotel in London on October 30, Mugabe is in an unforgiving mood. He said he was preparing to confront his critics massing in Durban.
Minister of State at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office Peter Hain this week expressed his personal regret to Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge for the London incident.
While Mudenge claimed this constituted a formal apology, British officials have stressed it was not.
The British have pointed out that the Zimbabwean high commission in London had not requested any special security arrangements for the visit. Now Tatchell has waded in, again accusing Blair of “shameful appeasement” of Mugabe who he describes as “Ian Smith with a black face”. Smith headed the Rhodesian white minority regime from 1964 to 1979.
Tatchell worked as a fund-raiser for Mugabe’s Zanu party in the 1970s. In a letter to Blair this week, Tatchell demanded that the British premier initiate moves to expel Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth and suspend British aid “until such time as Robert Mugabe’s government halts its attacks on the gay community and other abuses of human rights”.
At the time of his “ambush”, Tatchell said it was “a dereliction of Britain’s obligations under international law to allow Mugabe to go shopping at Harrods without attempting to call him to account for his crimes against humanity”.
As he held Mugabe by the arm, Tatchell cited the torture of Zimbabwean journalists Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto, who were abducted by the army in January.
Mugabe last weekend attacked Blair for not honouring commitments made by his Conservative predecessors on land reforms.
“This government of little men, Blair and others, don’t seem to understand and when you talk to them they say they don’t know about it,” Mugabe complained.
British high commissioner Peter Longworth on Wednesday said his government was keen to assist with a land reform programme that is legal, transparent and delivers land to ordinary people rather than Mugabe’s cronies. But Zimbabwe’s president appears determined to persist with his increasingly bizarre conspiracy theory.
“Each time I pass through London you get people milling around trailing,” he complained referring to gay activists. “You see, that is the gangster regime of Blair.”
“The prime minister is not a gay gangster,” a representative for Blair firmly replied.
Mugabe and Blair are due to meet in Durban this weekend at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting where despite surface cordiality sparks could fly behind the scenes.
It will be difficult to hold Blair responsible for protests planned both by South African gay activists and relatives of people killed in Matabeleland in the 1980s.
The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality will be mounting a picket outside the International Convention Centre together with Amnesty International.