New Ground authors quoted in parliamentary debate on Zimbabwe

Speaking in a House of Commons debate on the crisis in Zimbabwe yesterday, Andrew Selous raised the plight of the 7 million people facing starvation in Zimbabwe, a country in which his own great great uncle was an early pioneer.

Along with Shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Ancram, who also spoke in the debate Andrew Selous called for the British Government to table a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring international monitoring of humanitarian aid and its distribution.  While the world's attention is focused on Iraq, Robert Mugabe is stepping up his abuses of human rights, including the use of food aid as a political weapon.

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Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire): Before I start, I should declare a slight family interest in the issue. My great-great uncle led Cecil Rhodes into what later became Rhodesia many years ago.

We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) talk about the shocking statistics from Zimbabwe today. I shall not go through them again at length, but four of them stuck out starkly: about 7.2 million people rely on food aid; 35 per cent. of the population are infected with the HIV virus-some 2.2 million people; a third of all those under 15 are orphans-around 600,000 people; and the unemployment rate is 70 per cent.

Commenting on his recent report on Zimbabwe, James Morris, the head of the World Food Programme, said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February that

"nationwide shortages of basic commodities and fuel, high parallel market prices and runaway inflation are a formula for disaster. More than half of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are now living with the threat of starvation. We are seeing hunger-related diseases. Children have dropped out of schools. Desperate families in rural Zimbabwe have resorted to eating wild fruits and tubers, some poisonous, just to survive. The government has declined permission for us to conduct nutritional surveys that would help target what resources we have to the hardest hit areas . . . Food is seen as weapon in domestic politics."

That is surely the most damming indictment possible of what is going on in Zimbabwe today. We probably all agree that the UK cannot act to solve the situation on its own, not least because of our colonial past. However, I share the great disquiet of the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt), and doubtless of hon. Members on both sides of the House, about the Government's recent actions with regard to the cricket tour. There should have been a far more robust stance. It is difficult to imagine the despair of the opposition and those suffering in Zimbabwe when they see the UK Government's apparent acceptance of our cricketers going to Zimbabwe and the comfort that that would have brought to the regime. When the Minister replies, will he say where the Department of Trade and Industry stands on sponsorship and trade with Zimbabwe?

The UK cannot sort out the problem on its own. What other institutions are left to us with which we can work to try to do something about the desperate situation in Zimbabwe? First, there is the Commonwealth-the historic association to which Zimbabwe has belonged, although it is, of course, currently suspended, and of which Britain is the head. I must say, however, that the Commonwealth has badly failed the people of Zimbabwe. During the elections-the Commonwealth's chance to show whether or not Zimbabwe's Government had democratic legitimacy-it sent only 42 observers to that country. I do not believe that there were enough observers or that they could do their job properly.

The troika that the Government appointed, comprising the Prime Minister of Australia and the Presidents of Nigeria and Kenya, has not found unanimity. Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo, almost unbelievably, say that things are getting better and recommend Zimbabwe's reinclusion in the Commonwealth. That is staggering. It shows clearly that, sadly, the Commonwealth will not be the vehicle that we might have hoped would solve the Zimbabwe situation.

What of the European Union? In recent weeks we have seen President Mugabe come to Europe, to Paris, despite-I have to say this in defence of the UK Government-strong protests on their part that that visit should not go ahead. Nevertheless, President Mugabe came to France, and it is difficult to underestimate the despair that that must have caused among those suffering in Zimbabwe. I understand that the common position on Africa adopted in February 2002 has a get-out clause in respect of travel to the EU, in that article 3.3 says that member states may permit Ministers to come to the EU

"on the grounds of attending meetings of international bodies or conducting political dialogue that promotes democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe".

Sadly, we must conclude that too many EU countries are trying to pursue their own African agenda for us to be able to look with any hope or confidence to the EU as a solution to the problem.

What of the African institutions to which we might look? The Government have tried to work with the South African development corporation and the New Partnership for Africa's development, or NEPAD. That is a subsidiary of the Organisation of African Unity, within which there is a peer review mechanism to which countries can subject themselves. I believe that that mechanism is fatally flawed, not least because of the strong involvement in the OAU of Libya, which is one of Zimbabwe's greatest supporters in Africa. The peer review mechanism gives us no grounds for hope with regard to intervention to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe.

President Mbeki, who is the current president of the Non-Aligned Movement and a member of the Commonwealth troika, has, almost unbelievably, secured Mr. Mugabe a unanimous vote of confidence from that organisation. That fairly shocking fact means that we cannot look to that group of nations either.

That leaves the United Nations and the World Food Programme as the only international bodies with a chance of getting the international community together to do something about Zimbabwe.

I hope that the UN will grasp the nettle. We saw it falter at the last hurdle with regard to Iraq, but I hope that it will rise to the challenge posed by the desperate humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe. I believe that The United Nations development Programme, which has representatives on the ground, should go into Zimbabwe with the food that is required to assist the 7.2 million people about whom we have heard repeatedly this morning.

The argument always advanced is that of sovereignty: that the UN cannot interfere in the affairs of a sovereign nation. With regard to sovereignty and democratic legitimacy, I noted that Baroness Park, when initiating a recent debate on the issue in the House of Lords, said that originally there had been 5.2 million Zimbabweans on the electoral register, but that that figure had increased miraculously to 5.6 million just before the general election-an extra 400,000 voters had been "created". However, in August 2002 the census for Zimbabwe showed only 4.2 million adults. The information that has emerged since that general election shows that even if there had been the faintest belief that the general election was legitimate, the rigging of the figures in the electoral registers shows that it was not. The Government of Zimbabwe has no democratic legitimacy.

The world must address the issue of sovereignty. I commend the writings of two able and active Conservatives, James Mawdsley, the former human rights campaigner from Burma, and Ben Rogers, who argued recently that sovereignty lies not only with the Government of a country, but with its people, and that when a Government are clearly abusing the best interests of its people-as is evidently the case in Zimbabwe-institutions such as the UN have the right to intervene.

There is a great deal of hypocrisy with regard to Zimbabwe. I do not believe that if a white regime in Africa were behaving towards its people in such a way, the situation would have been allowed to continue. Why were there marches on the streets when the Selous scouts were in Zimbabwe, but none now with the green bombers? Many in the UK should ask themselves that question.

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