Mugabe should never have ruled Zimbabwe says former British Foreign Minister David Owen

“The dark sides of politics and identity are, ultimately, a reflection of the human condition. Just as politics can mirror base human instincts such as the lust for power and wealth, so too can ethnic or tribal distinctions. Hatred, fear, the pleasure of vengeance and unadorned sadism are also potent and all-too-human impulses. It is unnecessary to look beyond the history of the 20th century to see that where such impulses coalesce, individuals and societies are capable of acts that were not deemed possible by those who knew them. Such a coalescence provides the most credible explanation for what occurred in Matabeleland in 1983-4. ZANU and ZAPU were not only rival political formations whose leaders had long and bitter personal histories; by the 1970s and 1980s their memberships were increasingly polarised along ethnolinguistic lines. Within the parties, political and tribal antagonisms had progressively merged and magnified each other. To be a ZAPU supporter was, increasingly and undeniably, to be a Ndebele speaker. But, in the minds of many ZANU-PF members, this also meant that to hate ZAPU was to hate the Ndebele people. This is one reason why the Gukurahundi killings could be regarded not only as ‘politicide’ but as genocide.”

I first became involved in African politics in 1968-70, when Minister for the Royal Navy and responsible for the Beira patrol, which had been established after UN Resolution 221 in 1966 to check on oil tankers heading for the Mozambique port. Beira acted as the terminus of a pipeline going into what was then Southern Rhodesia. Bulgaria, Mali, Uruguay and the Soviet Union abstained because of the inadequacy of the measures. France also abstained because she did not believe that there was a threat to international peace which the Resolution endorsed.

The Beira Patrol was the closest the UK ever came to having to take on Ian Smith militarily following his unilateral declaration of independence on 11 November 1965. Many criticise the then-Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, for not using force when independence was declared, but he had only been elected with a narrow majority in 1964, and he and Denis Healey felt that to use force would divide the British people. To have landed troops would have necessitated first destroying the Rhodesian air force, and this had been ruled out as it meant extensive bombing of airfields close to civilian housing.

On 1 April 1966, Joanna V was sighted by a Shackleton aircraft flying from Majunga (Madagascar) and intercepted by HMS Plymouth on 4 April but allowed to proceed and actually berthed at Beira in Mozambique on 10 April. On that same day the tanker Manuela was intercepted by HMS Bowick and boarded until the tanker had steamed well south of Beira.

The Portuguese government were refusing to participate in sanctions and refusing to interfere in the transport of any merchandise into Rhodesia. Joanna V was struck off the Greek register, given provisional Panamanian registration and told it would be cancelled if she discharged oil.

On 15 April the Portuguese flew in paratroopers from the port of Lourenco Marques to protect the Beira pipeline, and tension mounted as the world watched to see what the Portuguese would do next. On 16 April Ian Smith announced that, though the oil on the Joanna V was meant for his country, he had decided to forego it in order not to involve other countries in his dispute with the United Kingdom.

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