Is it time for Britain to re-engage with Mugabe's Zimbabwe in the interests of future business ties?

Jonathan Moyo has changed horses so many times since independence he must by now be both saddle sore and dizzy.

But ears pricked up and tails wagged in Whitehall when Zimbabwe’s best-known political opportunist said in Harare on June 12 that Britain’s coalition government could and should repair long-damaged relations with Zimbabwe.

The following day the suggestion, which had been approved by President Robert Mugabe and key members of the ruling party Zanu(PF), made 50 words in the Daily Telegraph:

“A close ally of Robert Mugabe has called for talks with the British Government. Jonathan Moyo, Mr Mugabe’s communications chief, said David Cameron could repair relations between the two countries. He said the Prime Minister’s ‘circumspect and careful attitude’ had reduced the levels of ‘noise and tension’ between London and Harare.”

New envoy

This soft key call for dialogue with David Cameron came less than two months before Britain sends a new envoy to Harare to replace Mark Canning and only a few months after British Foreign Minister William Hague called on the Commonwealth to play a greater role in shaping the future of Zimbabwe.

“Will it make the great leap necessary to live up to its ideas fully, make a greater contribution to its citizens and have a bigger impact on world affairs, or will it continue to tread softly?” Hague said in Sydney last January.

The mutli-cultural “club’s” response was deafening silence.

But after chewing over what’s at stake if deadlock continues much longer, Michael Holman (a former Africa Editor of the Financial Times) made some suggestions which must have warmed the hearts of those who'd like to see relations between London and Harare restored.

On 29 May he wrote a letter to his former newspaper which said that time is running out for Mugabe and that the combination of advancing years and poor health are finally taking their toll ion the 87-year old African despot.

Long crisis

The letter spoke of a “modest easing” of a long crisis on the economic front that had brought down to double figures an inflation rate that once paralysed the economy of Zimbabwe.

Holman said that political tensions now put recent economic gains at risk and that as a promised election draws nearer, intimidation by Zanu(PF) is on the rise. And a nervous population seeks assurances about post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.

“If ever there were a time for constructive external advice, it is now,” Holman said.

“Yet rather than encouraging contact, London appears to have ordered its embassy in Harare to do little more that keep a diplomatic death watch, as if Mr Mugabe’s demise will mark the removal of the obstacle on the country’s road to peace and democracy.”

He said that London’s reluctance to talk to Zimbabwe was in stark contrast with Britain’s treatment of the white minority government led by Ian Smith after UDI in 1965.

“During those years, scarcely a month went by without a diplomatic initiative of one sort of another, in which the way had been paved by a succession of intermediaries and honest brokers.”

He said the need for reconciliation between Zimbabwe and Britain is urgent.

Time to talk

Britain should be active in promoting discussions with the Mugabe regime – not just biding its time until the passing of Zimbabwe’s present leader.

“The experience of Lancaster House should be kept in mind. Three decades later, it is time that talking began again.”

On 6 June Kate Hoey MP – a friend of Zimbabweans if ever there was one in the House of Commons – stepped into the ring and threw a couple of telling punches.

In a letter to the same paper she said: “The days are long gone when Zimbabwe’s future could be stitched up through behind-the-scenes contact by go-betweens from the British government. Zimbabwe’s future must be decided by Zimbabweans, most of whom are under 30 and born after independence. They have made their democratic will very clear and it is to them that Mr Mugabe and the geriatric leadership of Zanu (PF) have shut their ears.”

And she added: “Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change speak for Zimbabwe now and our dialogue should be with them.”

In the 1930s (in reference to Hitler) Sigmund Freud warned that madmen are at their most dangerous when they smile at you.

Full of smiles

In Johannesburg this month, Emmerson Mnangagawa – known to some as The Crocodile and to others as The Butcher of Matabeleland – was full of smiles as he gave an interview to Colin Freeman of the Sunday Telegraph. It was his first with a British journalist in 10 years.

What excellent timing! Freeman noted that when he met the veteran politician cum CIO supremo at a SADC meeting aimed at solving the crisis in Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa was full of smiles and charm.

Writes Freeman – “ . . .he gives a smile that’s not particularly reptilian, a handshake that oozes no blood and a manner largely devoid of ‘Comrade Bob’s’ anti- British histrionics. What is equally surprising, though, is the thumbs up he gives to Zimbabwe’s coalition government, brokered in 2009 after outside pressure forced Zanu (PF) to share power – or at least some of it –with their sworn enemies in Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.”

Highly informed sources in Harare tell me that many more are waiting to step up centre stage and dazzle their fellow troopers with gleaming teeth and smiles as wide as barn doors, especially Jonathan Moyo who would love to be seen as one of the ‘intermediaries and honest brokers’ Michael Holman mentions in his letter to the Financial Times.

Incoming ambassador Deborah Bronnert has promised to do her best to normalize frosty relations between Harare and Whitehall.

“The United Kingdom,” she says, “has long been a friend of the Zimbabwean people and I look forward to ensuring that the commitment remains as strong as ever.”

New breed

She is one of David Cameron’s new breed of business-minded diplomats, men and women who long ago abandoned any though that Britain could run up and down political football pitches, blowing whistles and handing out yellow and red cards to those she perceived as wrongdoers.

“I want to reorientate the Foreign Office to be more commercially minded,” David Cameron said in New York on 22 July last year soon after one of Africa’s most eminent political figures, Graca Machel, condemned Britain for taking a patronizing big brother” attitude towards its former colonies – especially Zimbabwe.

Is rapprochement between Zimbabwe and Britain an idea whose time has come?

Professor Stephen Chan came close to the heart of the matter on January 27 this year when he wrote in The Zimbabwean that economic needs over-write moral considerations which were once so important to the British public.

“ …the West is itself in a financial crisis,” he said in an article headlined Confusion as political landscape fractures.

“Suddenly all of Europe needs Zimbabwe as a trading partner, as a business partner, as an investment partner, as a customer and as a purchaser of European goods and services. Europe, as a result, will start doing business with Zanu (PF) in 2011. There is much conjecture that the EU will contemplate some form of lifting of sanctions – they have not worked in any way to curtail or reduce the dominating capacity of Zanu (PF). If isolation and sanctions have not worked, some form of engagement might.”

Michael Holman went as far as to suggest that a reconciliation agenda “might include the merit of an amnesty for those who admit and repent their political and economic crimes.”

So far, skilled diplomats and other messengers have spoken gently but with grave concern about the welfare of million of Zimbabweans whose voices we have not heard.

Not yet a sound.

Through these and other columns they might.

Whether a new breed of business diplomats and investors, whose eyes are on top dollar and fast buck, will pay much attention to the past sufferings and long-term hopes of million of ordinary and often impoverished men, women and children remains, of course, to be seen.

I doubt it.