Zimbabwe

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): Will the Foreign Secretary please make a statement on the situation in Zimbabwe?

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)]

In the early hours of this morning, soldiers from the Zimbabwean army deployed in central Harare, taking control of state television, surrounding Government ministries and sealing off Robert Mugabe’s official and private residences. At 1.26 am local time, a military officer appeared on state television and declared that the army was taking what he called “targeted action” against “criminals” around Mugabe. Several Government Ministers, all of them political allies of Grace Mugabe, are reported to have been arrested. At 2.30 am, gunfire was heard in the northern suburb of Harare where Mugabe has a private mansion. Areas of the central business district have been sealed off by armoured personnel carriers.

Our embassy in Harare has been monitoring the situation carefully throughout the night, supported by staff in the Foreign Office. About 20,000 Britons live in Zimbabwe, and I can reassure the House that so far we have received no reports of any British nationals being injured. We have updated our travel advice to recommend that any Britons in Harare should remain in their homes or other accommodation until the situation becomes clearer. All our Zimbabwean and UK-based embassy staff and their families are accounted for.

I will say frankly to the House that we cannot tell how developments in Zimbabwe will play out in the days ahead. We do not know whether this marks the downfall of Mugabe or not, and we call for calm and restraint. The events of the last 24 hours are the latest escalation of months of brutal infighting within the ruling ZANU-PF party, including the sacking of a vice-president and the purging of his followers, and the apparent positioning of Grace Mugabe as a contender to replace her 93-year-old husband.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have taken a deep interest in Zimbabwe over many years, and I pay particular tribute to the courage and persistence of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey)—I will call her my hon. Friend—who has tirelessly exposed the crimes of the Mugabe regime and visited the country herself during some of its worst moments. The United Kingdom, under Governments of all parties, has followed the same unwavering principles in its approach to Zimbabwe. First and foremost, we will never forget the strong ties of history and friendship with that beautiful country, which has been accurately described as the jewel of Africa.

All that Britain has ever wanted for Zimbabweans is for them to be able to decide their own future in free and fair elections. Mugabe’s consuming ambition has always been to deny them that choice. The House will remember the brutal litany of his 37 years in office: the elections that he rigged and stole; the murder and torture of his opponents; and the illegal seizure of land, which led to the worst hyperinflation in recorded history—measured in billions of percentage points—and forced the abolition of the Zimbabwean dollar. All the while, his followers were looting and plundering that richly endowed country, so that Zimbabweans today are, per capita, poorer than they were in 1980. This has left many dependent on the healthcare, education and food aid provided by the Department for International Development.

Britain has always wanted the Zimbabwean people to be masters of their fate, and for any political change to be peaceful, lawful and constitutional. Authoritarian rule, whether in Zimbabwe or anywhere else, should have no place in Africa. There is only one rightful way for Zimbabwe to achieve a legitimate Government, and that is through free and fair elections held in accordance with the country’s constitution. Elections are due to be held in the first half of next year, and we will do all that we can, with our international partners, to ensure that they provide a genuine opportunity for all Zimbabweans to decide their future. That is what we urge on all parties. I shall be speaking to the deputy President of South Africa later today.

Every Member will follow the scenes in Harare with good will and sympathy for Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people, and I undertake to keep the House updated as events unfold.

[Kate Hoey]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his deep and passionate response to what is a very fluid situation. This is clearly a significant tipping point for the power balance in Zimbabwe, and although it is not a coup in the sense that the military want to run the country, it is a coup to ensure that former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa takes over.

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that changing from one ruthless leader to another ruthless leader will not help to create the conditions that can lead to genuinely free and fair elections in the coming year, and will not solve a dire economic situation in which thousands of people are destitute and food is scarce? Many people in Zimbabwe and the international community will welcome the removal of the Mugabes if that is the outcome, but does the Foreign Secretary recognise that the former vice-president is probably the one person in Zimbabwe who inspires even greater terror than Mugabe, and that he was responsible for the massacres of at least 20,000 people in Matabeleland shortly after Mugabe took power in 1980? Does he recognise that Mnangagwa, as head of Joint Operations Command, is widely viewed as having co-ordinated ZANU-PF’s campaign of torture, murder and repression in the lead-up to the rigged run-off in the 2008 election?

Will the Foreign Secretary make it clear that Her Majesty’s Government’s policy on Zimbabwe will not change overnight, and that we will not jump in to welcome Mnangagwa should he take over right away? What more will the Government do to help ensure that free and fair elections take place and to give warm support to those who are struggling inside Zimbabwe to raise the flag of true freedom? Will the Foreign Secretary make representations to the African Union, the Southern African Development Community and South Africa to press ZANU-PF to allow genuinely free elections, and not just to accept another strongman dictator?

Finally, will the Foreign Secretary recognise the importance of listening to the voices of the huge Zimbabwean diaspora here in the United Kingdom, many of whom sought political asylum, but want nothing more than to see their once prosperous country flourishing and free?