As the UN warns of mass starvation in Zimbabwe the time has come to stop talking about the ‘Zimbabwe elections’ as if they were/are elections.

What we are seeing are the deranged throes of a violent gang around and including Mugabe aimed at staying in power at any cost to their own country. No vote held under these circumstances can have legitimacy or credibility. Mugabe presumably is hoping to brutalise the Opposition into a boycott, so as to save himself the trouble of cheating and piously claiming victory.

Voting is a subtle process intended to give citizens a substantive choice in who runs their country. Just as voting was a meaningless farce in communist countries where only one party could take part, it also is meaningless in a country where the voters are being openly attacked and intimidated and the government is howling that its opponents are a deadly enemy to whom they will not cede power.

Mugabe in fact has a weird point when he rants that Western and especially British interest in Zimbabwe is racist.

Because of its sizeable and significant ‘white’/European community and all the history involved, Zimbabwe attracts significant interest in our media. In a (patronising?) way we have notably higher expectations of this country. Perhaps they are being met. Compared to previous catastrophes in Rwanda and various wars elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe is still a model of decorum.

An intelligent Zim leader would be using the presence of this ‘European’ community to develop his country more speedily and creatively. Just as we could be doing far more to mobilise Zimbabweans in the UK and indeed in Zimbabwe against the collapse of their country, even if that would allow Mugabe to ‘prove’ that the Colonial Masters were back in business…

A few years back when Mugabe started to attack the farming community I talked privately to a British Cabinet Minister. I said that to my unexpert eye a likely course of events looked to be:

  • ethnic cleansing of ‘white’ farmers
  • speedy deterioration of the economy
  • risk of widespread hunger/famine
  • millions of people displaced plus countless deaths
  • British taxpayers forlornly watching this fiasco, then being sent a large ‘assistance’ bill to try to repair some of the damage, much of which spending would do no good anyway

I urged the argument that HMG had to mobilise a vigorous intervention of one or other sort immediately to force Mugabe from power and so head all this off. Was that not the only ‘moral foreign policy’ way to go?

The reply: "I agree, but there would be no political support to do it…"

So much for the claim that HMG/DFID policy is all about lifting people from poverty – we have stood blinking unhappily as Mugabe has plunged Zimbabwe into ruin.

Whatever happened to our Moral Foreign Policy?

Or even Enlightened Self-Interest?