“THE fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all,” said former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit in Dar es Salaam in March 2007.
“Today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola, it will be any other African country.
“And any government that is perceived to be strong and to be resistant to imperialists, would be made a target and would be undermined.
“So tell us not to allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of SADC, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa.”
The most scintillating aspect of Thabo Mbeki’s article is the revelation on how President Robert Mugabe expertly handled the emotive land redistribution issue both in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
It was the mark of how far expectations of toppling Robert Mugabe had fallen in London that Tony Blair, the man behind Harare’s current problems, lied to the British public, Europe and the world that Claire Short’s personal opinions on land reform in Zimbabwe were the British government policy and would have led to the invasion of Harare by its former colony.
But the yet to be fully told story is that President Mugabe shelved plans to implement land reform in Zimbabwe in 1990 in order for South Africa to gain independence.
Britain, led by Blair, accosted the world to turn against President Mugabe for giving back land to the majority.
“In 1990 as we began our negotiations to end the system of apartheid, the then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, engaged President Mugabe to persuade him that the Government of Zimbabwe should not proceed with any programme to implement a radical land reform, given that the Lancaster House constitutional 10-year prohibition of this had expired,” reads parts of Mbeki’s piece.
“Chief Anyaoku and the Commonwealth Secretariat feared that any radical land redistribution in Zimbabwe at that stage would frighten white South Africa and thus significantly complicate our own process of negotiations.
“President Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Government agreed to Chief Anyaoku’s suggestion and therefore delayed for almost a decade the needed agrarian reform, which had been a central objective of the political and armed struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe.
“Unfortunately, contrary to what the Conservative Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major had agreed, Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for International Development, Claire Short, repudiated the commitment to honour the undertaking made at Lancaster House.”
In a November 1997 letter to the then Zimbabwe Minister of Agriculture and Land, the late Kumbirai Kangai, Short wrote:
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special 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.”
But in a February 22 2015 article in The Telegraph, the Conservative Party Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, condemns Britain for ‘playing a part in the disaster’.
The British government, writes Mbeki, agreed to fund the arrangement, compensating the former colonial farmers for land that they gave up.
“Later, Prime Minister Blair told me that the British Government he led never formally took this decision to repudiate the Lancaster House Agreement and regretted that in the end, his Government had to accept it because Claire Short had succeeded to convince the UK public that it was indeed Government policy!” notes Mbeki.
Yet Blair, cushioned by hostilities over the land redistribution exercise, contemplated invading Zimbabwe for embarking on the programme.
Mbeki says information that Western countries were keen on toppling President Mugabe and his government was based on communication the South African government constantly had with the West.
“In the period preceding the 2002 Zimbabwe Elections, the UK and the US in particular were very keen to effect this regime change and failing which to impose various conditions to shorten the period of Mugabe Presidency,” says Mbeki.
“Our then Minister of Intelligence, Lindiwe Sisulu, had to make a number of trips to London and Washington to engage the UK and US governments on their plans for Zimbabwe, with strict instructions from our Government to resist all plans to impose anything on the people of Zimbabwe, including by military means.
“Accordingly it was not from hearsay or third parties that we acquired the knowledge about Western plans to overthrow President Mugabe, but directly from what they communicated to a representative of our Government.”
As Zimbabwe basks in the glory of its vindication, that it was and still is, a victim of Britain’s garrulous machination to effect regime change, Thabo Mbeki’s above warning in Tanzania did and could not ring hollow in the ears of progressive minds in Africa.
If South Africa had bowed down to British pressure, Zimbabwe would be in ruins, like Libya.