(NEWZIMBABWE) UK 'has no moral duty' to compensate Zim farmers
UK 'has no moral duty' to compensate Zim farmersby
30/06/2009 00:00:00
BRITAIN has no legal or moral obligation to compensate white farmers for land seized by the Zimbabwe government, the former colonial power’s outgoing ambassador has said.
Evicted white commercial farmers’ “requirement for compensation from the Zimbabwean government is probably the right legal process,” says Andrew Pocock, but “whether it has any practical impact is another matter.”
Winding down his three-year posting to Zimbabwe dominated by allegations of meddlesome diplomacy by President Robert Mugabe’s government, Pocock used an interview with SW Radio Africa to revive a decade-long debate around Zimbabwe’s controversial land reforms which played a massive part in a chill of diplomatic relations between Harare and London.
He said: “In the fairly recent past, the Zimbabwean government has said that compensation rests with the United Kingdom. Well it does not – either legally or morally.
“In Lancaster House, sovereignty was transferred to the Zimbabwean government. The disruption on the farms was not caused by anything to do with the United Kingdom, it was driven by Zimbabwean government policy … therefore we have no legal obligation for compensation. We’ve never accepted that, and we won’t.”
Pocock’s comments are a direct rejection of the position of the Zimbabwe government – chiefly that Britain agreed to fund land reform at the 1979 Lancaster House talks where the white minority rulers agreed a cessation of hostilities and a surrender of sovereignty.
At Lancaster, Britain agreed to fund land reform on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller principle’, where farmers who were unwilling to stay in Zimbabwe would be bought out by funds provided by the British through the Zimbabwean government.
Under the agreement, the new Zimbabwean government could not seize European-owned land for the first ten years of independence. Britain provided £44 million to the government for land resettlement projects.
In the same interview, Pocock appeared to shift slightly when he alluded to Britain’s “obligations”, while insisting that his country did not have “unlimited liability” to compensate farmers.
He said: “During the period of the 1980s, the UK spent £44 million on land reform which was a substantial sum at the time. We did it on a willing seller, willing buyer basis as had been agreed and we only stopped funds for land when it was clear that land was not being passed to the poor and the landless.
“That is not reneging, that is simply pointing to the evidence and it’s also resisting the proposition that has crept in that the UK somehow has unlimited liability forever and a duty to fund land reform in Zimbabwe. The Lancaster House never said anything like that.
“What Lancaster House said and what we undertook then was (a) to do everything we could to help with land reform (b) to contribute substantially ourselves and (c) to seek support from others in the international community. Now, we did all that, so this is really again another urban or rural myth that we need at some early stage to lay to rest.”
In a now infamous letter to the Zimbabwe government in 1997, Britain’s former International Development Secretary Claire Short said she did 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 … It follows from this that a programme of rapid land acquisition as you now seem to envisage would be impossible for us to support,” Short said in the letter now seen as a turning point in relations between the two countries.
Three years after Short’s letter, white farmers were under siege from independence war veterans and President Mugabe’s supporters who marched on their properties, triggering an outpouring of international condemnation which would lead to Zimbabwe’s international isolation until recently when Western countries agreed to government-to-government talks following the formation of a unity government.
The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), representing 400 white land owners, recently demanded US$15 billion compensation from the cash-strapped Zimbabwe government for farm “improvements, damages and interest”.
The CFU says most of the country's remaining white commercial farmers are no longer interested in farming and will give up their land if the government gives them fair compensation.
According to the CFU, Zimbabwe expropriated 11,600 out of the 12,000 white-owned commercial farms since 2000.
Pocock said there may be a moment in the future when Britain could assist in the settlement of the land dispute but warned that such an arrangement would not be on the “old paternalistic basis”.
He said: “I hope as we move into the future, as we reach a situation where the restoration of commercial agriculture is possible, it won’t be on the old paternalistic basis, it will be on some new foundation but when we reach that point, as part of the natural justice, as part of building confidence for future investors, some element of compensation for people unconstitutionally displaced might be considered.
“I think we haven't got anywhere near the mechanisms and we certainly haven't decided who would pay for that compensation or indeed how much it would be but I think in natural justice, some form of address to this should be considered and I hope in due course will.”
Britain recently named Mark Canning as its new ambassador to Zimbabwe to replace Pocock who is set to accept a new diplomatic assignment.
Labels: ANDREW POCOCK, LAND REFORM, WHITE FARMERS
posted by MrK @ 7:44 PM
2 Comments:
Successive British Governments have hated white Zimbabweans (of British origin) since Rhodesia under Ian Smith knew in advance that Mugabe was a tyrant.
Ian Smith then and also showed up Harold Wilson and his Minister Arthur Bottomley as being total idiots for promoting Mugabe to be Africa’s biggest tyrant.
Andrew Pocock, like a typical politician, recites unbalanced half-truths, lies or convenient factual omissions to suit their agendas for forfeiting proper rationale to tyranny.
" Successive British Governments have hated white Zimbabweans (of British origin) since Rhodesia under Ian Smith knew in advance that Mugabe was a tyrant. "
So they instituted their own version of apartheid. :-/
President Mugabe is not 'a tyrant'. He has not missed and election since independence (the only fully participatory elections Zimbabwe/Rhodesia has ever seen), has a parliamentary opposition which is now sharing government, a judiciary independent enough to frequently find against the government.
How does this make President Mugabe 'Africa's biggest tyrant' again?
The essence is that he did what needed to be done, which is redistribute the land the people had fought for over and over.
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