Zimbabwe - Meg lays down the law

Meg Munn Labour MP for Sheffield (Heeley)48, Co-operative leader and Methodist, received a little known boost to her career on 28th June when she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and ......no doubt is accompanied by her researcher husband Dennis Bates.

She spoke yesterday in the House of Commons about Zimbabwe. (Link to speech which is being reproduced at Embassy sites worldwide - this is the Moscow Embassy site) It may be noted that neither the boy David nor his Shadow Hague were present. Bossy Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab) was at least anxious to ask where the missing youthful Foreign Secretary was .. apparently dealing with Russia ... "in which he liaised with the Opposition" , explaining both their absences.

It is a speech that is essential reading (if only for the fact that it is the first debate on Zimbabwe for 3 years) ... it concludes ...

We maintain a network of consular correspondents to ensure we keep in close touch with our nationals in other urban and rural areas. We have a comprehensive and regularly updated contingency plan that covers the 12 000 nationals registered with the British Embassy, including the elderly and vulnerable.

The country and people of Zimbabwe are being driven into the ground by the policies of a corrupt and brutal regime. Zimbabwe can recover, but only if the policies are in place to permit it. The UK stands ready to help substantially with Zimbabwe's recovery. I know that many of the Zimbabwean diaspora are anxious to return to Zimbabwe and play their part.

That will only happen with a major change of direction, and a change of policy. We do not believe that Robert Mugabe is willing or capable to change. Nor - more importantly - do the people of Zimbabwe. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure that their voice is heard, so that Zimbabwe can enjoy new leadership and a new start.

Call me old fashioned but talk of " regularly updated contingency plan (s)" and " Zimbabwe can enjoy new leadership and a new start." sounds awfully like something is underway .. especially as "We do not believe that Robert Mugabe is willing or capable to change."

Watch this space .... as Didymus Mutasa clears out the last of the white settlers from their farms. Eviction notices effective September 30th have been issued by , signed by the Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement.

It may of course be all empty words, signifying nothing, but maybe Gordy is going to effect real change. let's hope so. The debate was watched closely throughout Africa .. let us hope that they anxious listeners are not betrayed yet again.

Joyce Mujuru coronation due, Mbeke heads the Anschluss as Rand Monetary Area is re-defined

When French President Jacques Chirac had his Franco African summit in February this year he invited Joyce Mujuru not Mugabe ostensibly becauseof the European Union (EU) travel ban on him. Zimbabwe said it was Mugabe or no one.

This deliberate and public snub of Mugabe represents a marked change from the last France-African summit in France in 2003, when Chirac controversially waived the EU travel ban to allow Mugabe to attend.

It is evident that since SA Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka met President Mugabe in February 2006 that close negotiations have been developing between ZANU / MDC about some form of transition.

Following this leaders from ZANU PF and the two MDC factions held separate talks with South African government officials in March this year . Vice President Joyce Mujuru held crisis talks over Mugabe’s leadership with her South African counterpart Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. By a strange coincidence the two Secretary Generals of the MDC factions, Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube were also in town and met the SA government. They met in the Westcliffe Hotel and Joyce stayed in Room 301 the Presidential suite.

No details of their discussion have ever been released other than Biti and Ncube are said to have met the SA government as one group and Mujuru on her own.

Highly-placed sources, named but not able to be identified,have apparently told The Zimbabwean that Mbeki had already suggested the plan to the ruling party and both factions of the MDC.

The reality is that 40% of electricity there comes from South Africa; Zimbabwe owes it hundreds of millions of rands. The lion’s share of trade between the two countries in South Africa's favour too; then there’s the soft loans, the investment and expertise. Zimbabwe will crumble even further without South Africa - it adds up to a lot of commercial and political leverage.

Now today we learn that Tomaz Salamao, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has a proposal that the Common Monetary Area (CMA) should include Zimbabwe.The CMA now has South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. SADC leaders have mandated Salamao to find an economic solution to the Zimbabwe crisis, and President Thabo Mbeki a political solution.

Mbeki has persuaded Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to start substantive negotiations today for a just political dispensation to enable free and fair elections to be held, probably around March next year. Hmmmm.

Though the smaller countries have their own currencies and central banks, these are a form of national window dressing in practice, there is a common currency, the Rand. The other currencies are pegged to the rand at par, and CMA monetary policy essentially emanates from Pretoria.

Salamao's proposal,is therefore that the rand will simply replace the Zimbabwe dollar, which is now virtually worthless, with inflation running at around 5 000% and the real exchange rate to the US dollar now somewhere in the region of 250 000.

Publicly there is talk is of selling this to Mugabe and it being explicitly conditional on Mugabe accepting the sort of fundamental political reforms which are to be negotiated in the Zanu PF and MDC dialogue in Pretoria.

For Zimbabwe to join the CMA currency union it would have to bring not only financial indicators such as interest rates into line with the CMA, but also fiscal indicators such as external debts and deficits. These are the implicit constraints in national policy-making which any country accepts on entering a currency union.

Would Mugabe surrender de facto sovereignty? No.

Mbeke is maybe publicly stating that he is hoping that a delayed election (probably rigged) would soften the blow. It won't and Mbeke knows it.

On Friday, April 20, 2007 Lord Patel forecast Mbke's Anschluss, and it is evident that Vice President Joyce Mujuru (however unsavoury - and boy is she unsavoury) is the chosen leader and has been groomed for the latter day role of Seyss-Inquart .

It may be likened to Kohl offering equivalency of the Ost Mark to the D mark. It is effectively a take over, an annexation ... an Anschluss. Naturally a variety of startled voices will be heard .. a sort of muted Stresa Front, but the real politik will take over and life will go on, the Chinese will accede and the bastards like Hoogstraaten and Prince Harry's girlfriends Daddy will make out like bandits as commercial life returns and the sanctions are dropped.

Mugabe ? He will be presented with a choice, a decent retirement - perhaps in Libya - Pyongyang - Peking ? Or he will have a swift and silent illness / heart attack. Unlike Schuschnigg who survived terrible imprisonment and ended up in St Louis teaching and died in 1967. Seyss Inquart was hanged at Nuremburg.

The role of David Triesman and Mr Boateng in all this ? Hmmmmmm.