British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing growing pressure from ministers and backbench Labour MPs to intensify Britain’s efforts to isolate Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe while African leaders strive to do the opposite, arguing that engagement would be more effective.
With Blair suggesting in private that he would dearly love to see Mugabe overthrown, one Labour MP has even suggested that a Commonwealth army should be sent into Zimbabwe.
”Why can’t there be a Commonwealth military force?,” Derek Wyatt, the Labour MP for Sittingbourne, asked. ”We can go into Iraq, we can go into Kosovo. But where there are 7,5 million people being deliberately starved to death, we do nothing.”
It is the sort of statement that enrages African leaders, who consider the former colonial master hypocritical and part of the problem. South Africa, in particular, has significant clout over Harare, but favours ”quiet diplomacy”.
While Downing Street insists that it would never sanction the use of force in Zimbabwe, Wyatt’s frustration is shared by MPs and ministers. Harrowing evidence of widespread hunger and state-sponsored violence has convinced MPs of the need to put pressure on Zimbabwe and its neighbours, to make Mugabe hold proper elections.
Glenys Kinnock, the Labour MEP who recently published a pamphlet outlining the ”gangsterism” of the Mugabe regime, believes the EU should tighten its sanctions, which already impose restrictions on members of the ruling Zanu-PF party. ”We should not offer health and education in Britain to the families of Zanu-PF members. It is also time for the IMF to pull out of Zimbabwe,” she said.
Britain, she believes, has to perform a delicate balancing act to avoid alienating Zimbabwe’s neighbours and to work with its European partners to ensure that EU sanctions remain in force. Jacques Chirac recently threatened to lift sanctions altogether unless Mugabe was allowed to attend a summit in Paris.
But some MPs and ministers believe Downing Street should do more — particularly by increasing the pressure on the South African president, Thabo Mbeki.
One well-placed Labour MP said: ”We should be getting a bit tougher with the South African government. This is being dragged on because the South Africans have not got the bottle. If South Africa pulled the plug on utilities, on electricity, they could do something.”
Downing Street is being told that it should use the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), which ties aid and business links to greater transparency and democracy in Africa, as leverage.
To Pretoria’s diplomats, the crisis looks different. Zimbabwe’s land remained too long in white hands partly because Britain went back on giving aid to black Zimbabweans wanting farms, they say, and without dispossessed whites there would not be such a fuss. How else to explain the west’s relative silence over human rights violations in such places as Swaziland, Uganda and Rwanda?
White land ownership is an unresolved and emotive issue across the continent. Emmerson Mnangagwa, a senior Mugabe official, was hugged and cheered at the African National Congress’s (ANC) party conference last December.
Two other factors shape Pretoria’s policy. To be seen siding with the west against Harare would shred President Mbeki’s standing with African leaders. South Africa also fears that pulling the plug on Zimbabwe’s economy would unleash mayhem.
It doubts that Zimbabwe’s opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, could run the country. Better, then, to work behind the scenes for a transition, with Mugabe stepping down and a moderate successor working with the MDC.
That policy has so far failed. Instead of being grateful, Harare has insulted Pretoria, calling its citizens barbaric and dirty, and making Mbeki look foolish by not easing press restrictions as promised.
Nigeria, the other regional power, has also stood by Mugabe, citing the historical justice of land reform. And since President Olusegun Obasanjo was criticised by western monitors over his election victory last week, he has something else in common with Mugabe.
Botswana and Kenya have broken African ranks and criticised Harare, but they are respectively too small and too distant to count.
Britain opposed South Africa this month over its successful attempt to rally African and Asian countries against an EU censure motion on Zimbabwe at the UN human rights commission.
But the Foreign Office says it cannot afford to fall out with Pretoria before December’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting, at which South Africa has indicated that it would like to end Harare’s suspension.
British diplomats privately admit they overplayed their hand in recent years, taking a high-profile stance which Mugabe portrayed as neo-imperialism. ”We’ve learned to tone it down,” said one.
The Foreign Office says the Africa minister, Lady Amos, has singled out Mugabe for stinging criticism; but the government insists it cannot put any more direct pressure on Zimbabwe — unless it were to invade the country, or cut its aid which feeds 1,5 million children.
Ministers have no intention of ”doing an Iraq” in Zimbabwe. One said: ”Talking of the use of military force is mad. For a start we do not have a Kuwait to invade from. Are Tories talking about the recolonisation of Zimbabwe by sending in white armies?” – Guardian Unlimited Â