Maravi

(NEWZIMBABWE) 'Smith wrecked UK plan to stop Mugabe gaining power'

COMMENT - " “Better a crook than a zealot,” " - I wonder whether the people of Zimbabwe would really prefer to be robbed blind under 'a crook' who is friendly to the West.

'Smith wrecked UK plan to stop Mugabe gaining power'
By Martin Fletcher
Posted to the web: 30/12/2008 15:29:10

IT WAS an audacious plan, and had it worked, Zimbabwe might still be a prosperous country, not a failed state.

Thirty years ago James Callaghan's British government worked secretly with African leaders to end the war in Rhodesia and to help Joshua Nkomo, not Robert Mugabe, to become leader of a newly independent Zimbabwe.

The corpulent Nkomo was corrupt, but not nearly as dangerous as Mugabe, David Owen, Callaghan's Foreign Secretary, told The Times shortly before the release of Cabinet papers under the 30-year rule. “Better a crook than a zealot,” Owen, now Lord Owen, said.

The plan collapsed primarily because Ian Smith, Rhodesia's beleaguered Prime Minister, refused to step down. Eighteen months later Mr Mugabe became Zimbabwe's first prime minister. Within two more years his North Korean-trained 5th Brigade was slaughtering Mr Nkomo's supporters, and three decades later he has reduced Zimbabwe to penury and starvation.

Lord Owen held several meetings with Nkomo in 1978, when Nkomo was leader of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (Zapu) and co-leader of the Patriotic Front, an alliance of Zapu and Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) that was fighting an increasingly bloody and successful guerrilla war against Smith's regime.

Nkomo gained Lord Owen's approval for a peace plan backed by Nigeria, Zambia and, Nkomo claimed, Angola. It envisaged Smith stepping down and Nkomo becoming head of a transitional government that would hold elections within a year under the supervision of a British resident commissioner and a UN peacekeeping mission.

It was designed to give Nkomo an electoral advantage over Mugabe by making him acting prime minister, even though he belonged to the minority Ndebele tribe.

Nkomo also hoped to include Mugabe in the transitional government and to split Zanu by excluding hardliners who opposed the plan.

Callaghan's Government had no illusions about Nkomo. “He was in it to feather his own nest,” Lord Owen said. However, it considered Mugabe a fanatical Maoist with little time for democracy.

Lord Owen, who commissioned a report from MI6 on Mugabe's character and beliefs, said: “His obduracy was so great and his zealotry so fierce that I felt you could not ignore the Maoist elements within him.”

On August 13, 1978, Nkomo put the plan to Smith at a secret meeting in Lusaka, Zambia's capital. Nkomo would have argued that Smith's forces were losing the war, that white generals were growing rebellious, and that Zapu would protect white Rhodesian interests better than Mugabe.

Smith stalled, then leaked details of the meeting. Mugabe, Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanzanzia, and others denounced the plan. Then, on September 3, Nkomo's guerrillas shot down an Air Rhodesia Viscount, killing 35 passengers.

In a BBC interview Nkomo not only claimed responsibility, but appeared to chuckle. Instantly “he became a pariah in terms of white opinion in Rhodesia, just as much as Mugabe was”, Lord Owen said.

The next year the war ended and Zimbabwe gained independence, but the Lancaster House agreement contained no advantages for Nkomo. In 1980 Zanu trounced Zapu in elections marked by violence and intimidation, and Mugabe took charge.

At first he courted whites, and Lord Owen thought he had misjudged the man. Then he launched his “genocide” against Nkomo's supporters and Zimbabwe's long slide began.

“People often ask why we went overboard for Robert Mugabe,” Lord Owen said. “The answer is that we didn't.” - Times

Labels: MUGABE, NEOCOLONIALISM, NKOMO, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 1:43 PM