Radio New Zealand

Interviewed by Kathryn Ryan

Nine to Noon,

15 June 2010

KATHRYN RYAN: We welcome our feature guest, a Minister in Zimbabwe’s coalition Government of National Unity, who is in New Zealand to lobby New Zealand Cricket to reconsider its cancelled tour to Zimbabwe. David Coltart is a human rights lawyer, a white elected senator and a founder of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. He finds himself in the incongruous position of being in the same government as Robert Mugabe. The Government of National Unity was the arrangement forged after the bloody and dubious election held late in 2008 which saw the torture and killing of members of David Coltart’s opposition party. The country descended into chaos, and Robert Mugabe refused to cede power despite losing both on seats and in a presidential poll. Zimbabwe’s economy has teetered under hyperinflation, political and economic crisis and food and fuel shortages.

So, a year on from its formation, how is the government working and what hope is there for an end to the political violence and crisis that has and still racks Zimbabwe? And what role will the international community play in any solutions?

David Coltart is Education and also Sports Minister in the Government. He’s just been at a meeting with the New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan, seeking to persuade a rethink on the cancelled cricked tour, and he joins us now in our Christchurch studio.

Good morning, thanks for being with us.

DAVID COLTART: Good morning Kathryn.

RYAN: Have you had any success in changing the cricket administrators’ minds?

COLTART:  I’ve had very good meetings over the last couple of days with my counterpart Murray McCully in Wellington and then, as you’ve just said, with Justin Vaughan this morning, and I think that both of them are very positive. Obviously, this is a decision that has to be taken by New Zealand Cricket, not the Government, but I’ve pointed out to them that as regards their fears regarding security and health, those really have been addressed, and that my belief is that it would be a positive development if the New Zealand Test team or a lesser team came to Zimbabwe. I think that they are now very open to that. In my meeting just ended with Justin Vaughan we discussed the possibility of New Zealand ‘A’ coming to Zimbabwe in September or October, prior to New Zealand’s Test team tour of Bangladesh. Whilst we haven’t reached final agreement on that – he’s obviously got to discuss with his colleagues in New Zealand – I think that there’s a greater openness now to tour, which I’m delighted about.

RYAN: The Black Caps had been scheduled to tour Zimbabwe this month. It was delayed once and postponed again earlier this year because of, as you say, security concerns. What did New Zealand Cricket – and it seems that Mr McCully is saying it’s their call – what did New Zealand Cricket say about where it stands on security concerns for its top side?

COLTART: Obviously that was discussed, and I explained in great detail that we’ve just, for example, hosted the Brazilian football team in the run up to the World Cup and we’ve just had a very successful triangular tournament with India and Sri Lanka. There was also the third umpire in that series, a New Zealander I believe named Jeff Crowe, who has reported back favourably regarding the security issue. You may recall that there were also health concerns –

RYAN: Cholera outbreaks and so forth.

COLTART: Yes, and the cholera epidemic has been tackled. That broke out in the summer of 2008-2009. Well, the last summer didn’t see that epidemic and the health sector has improved greatly. I also pointed out to Justin Vaughan that personally I can vouch for out health services; my eight year old daughter was recently mauled by a lion, which is another story in itself, but she received outstanding treatment in Harare and is now fully on her way to a total recovery. So, if my eight year old daughter can get top medical attention, I believe the New Zealand cricket team will receive exactly the same.

RYAN: She is doing ok?

COLTART: She is, thankfully.

RYAN: There are other issues surrounding this as well, but let’s clarify first of all what New Zealand Cricket has told you. It has said then that the possibility is there for New Zealand ‘A’, which is our second rank side, to possibly tour in September. What has it said about any return of the Black Caps?

COLTART: Well the Black Caps are due to tour, in terms of the ICC diary, in May next year after the World Cup which is due to be held in India, and there is now an openness to that tour going ahead. What I’ve explained is that from Zimbabwe Cricket’s perspective, we want to get back into Test Cricket but we want to do it gradually. We don’t want to throw our young team in at the deep end, and so they don’t anticipate playing Test Cricket until after the World Cup next year, and that is why today I asked that New Zealand ‘A’ come. When I travel to Melbourne tomorrow I’m going to be speaking to Cricket Australia to ask either an Australian ‘A’ or a young Australia side come out so that we can blood our Test team in preparation for our return to Test cricket, and they’re open to that.

RYAN: When will New Zealand Cricket give you a yes or a no?

COLTART: I think that I will get an answer by the end of the week. I think they are looking at diaries and a couple of other issues. But, let me say, it was a very constructive, positive meeting and I’m very hopeful that agreement can now be reached.

RYAN: When the tour was postponed right back in 2009, which of course was very early days after the election – and there had been terrible elections and loss of life and the refusal of Mugabe to cede the election – our Prime Minister talked openly about stopping the Black Caps tour, hinting at using passport controls if necessary. John Howard did that, or threatened it at least in 2007. And what John Key said was that we don’t support that regime, we don’t support what’s happening in that country and we don’t want to give a signal that we do. What is our Government saying to you now about the political aspect to opposing the tour?

COLTART:  I’ve had two very constructive meetings with Murray McCully, one private meeting on Sunday evening and then a more formal meeting in his office on Monday morning, and I spent a lot of time explaining to him the current environment. There are obviously deep concerns still in New Zealand and in the Government about ongoing human rights abuses in the country, which is of deep concern to me as a human rights lawyer. These are justifiable concerns. There’s also considerable scepticism about whether this Agreement is going to work. There are hardliners within ZANU-PF, Robert Mugabe’s party, who are seeking to break this agreement. There are ongoing land invasions and ongoing detentions of activists, and that gives rise to justified concern. But what I pointed out to Murray McCully was that we are making progress. It’s frustratingly slow, but in many ways Zimbabwe is at a similar stage to the position that South Africa was in in the early 1990s. Yes, the generals are still in control in Zimbabwe. Magnus Malan, the Apartheid general was still in control in the early 1990s in South Africa. And yes, there’s no guarantee that this transitional process will lead to a more democratic state in Zimbabwe. But it’s all that we’ve got. It’s the only viable peaceful option open to Zimbabwe. And what I said in conclusion briefly was that one has to support the democratic moderates in whatever way you can to encourage that process – and they’re open to that.

RYAN: What is the role of sport in this? Because the great irony is that South Africa, who New Zealand ultimately boycotted and was credited with having great influence on by refusing to tour its All Black rugby side, is today hosting the football World Cup with all the world’s sports teams coming there. What role does sport and sporting contacts play in your wish for Zimbabwe to head to fully democratic systems?

COLTART: Sport plays a huge role in building confidence in the process. The scepticism that New Zealanders have towards the process is shared by many Zimbabweans – rank and file grassroots Zimbabweans, the electorate, the public – who are not convinced that this process is in fact going to yield a new democratic Zimbabwe. And, as you said in your opening remarks, Zimbabwe has come through ten years of hell – of economic collapse, of great human rights abuses – and they need to see little green shoots of hope. Now we’ve done it in one sense in the economy; we’ve dollarized, we’ve brought in hard currency. We now use the United States Dollar, and that has led to stability in the economy. We’ve tackled inflation, and people see hope in that regard. In the Education sector, I’ve managed to re-open schools, I’ve established a good rapport with trade unions, and whilst the Education sector is still in a state of great crisis, children are at least going to school – and that builds public confidence in the process, that this process of a peaceful transition is yielding results.

Now the same applies to sport. When the cricket-loving public see us playing sport it builds national confidence. We saw that when Brazil came to Zimbabwe two weeks ago. It built this enormous patriotic spirit that transcended partisanship and thoughts of Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, and cricket has a vital role to play in that regard. We saw that in South Africa. You know the example I give is not so much New Zealand’s approach to South Africa in the 1980s, but New Zealand and other countries approach to South Africa in the 1990s. As you may recall, the South African Test team’s first foreign tour was to the West Indies as early as 1991, long before this process was guaranteed. But it was a confidence building mission, and the same applies today.

RYAN: And the argument that was the case in South Africa – that the boycotts were hurting the regime, hurting South African people, and part of the pressure that brought the collapse of apartheid – you don’t see it as a boycott that could have the same effect in Zimbabwe?

COLTART:  I think in many ways the parallel continues. The ban on sport in the 1980s yielded de Klerk and Mandela talking in 1990, but that stage has already passed in Zimbabwe. The sporting bans that were in place up until September 2008 played a very positive role in bringing Mugabe to the negotiating table, which in turn yielded the September 15^th agreement in 2008, which has now brought in this Transitional Government. But what we say to New Zealanders and the Government is that Morgan Tsvangirai, whose record on human rights is impeccable, and people like myself, are now saying you’ve got to help us in this process. And what we say is please listen to us – we are in Zimbabwe, we believe that this is going to be constructive, we’re asking for your help.

RYAN: How hard was it to become part of a government involving Robert Mugabe who lost that first election and overturned its results, by force effectively? How hard was it to become part of a government with him when you’d campaigned against the human rights abuses, and whose regime’s threats, intimidation and violence you’d campaigned against in the election itself?

COLTART: It’s a very difficult pill to swallow. My own personal record with Robert Mugabe goes back 27 years.

RYAN: You were a supporter like many people in the early days.

COLTART: Well I was, yes. In August 1981 as a student leader I received a telegram from Robert Mugabe when I’d been threatened by the Apartheid government with deportation. He was a hero, you know; as a student you get this letter from your Prime Minister – and so initially I was a great supporter of him. But when I returned to Zimbabwe from university in 1983 I came into the vortex of the genocide which occurred there, and of course that changed my opinion of him. And since then, long before the MDC, I’ve been at loggerheads with Robert Mugabe and his party. And in the last ten years, along with Morgan Tsvangirai and others, I’ve been detained, I’ve had my house searched, I’ve survived one assassination attempt by people loyal to him. So it’s a very difficult arrangement. But in 2008 we were faced with the prospect of Zimbabwe degenerating into a Somalia or a Liberia, and the prospect of hundreds of thousands of lives being lost. The region brokered this imperfect deal which offered a way forward, and we felt that we had no option but to try and make it work.

RYAN: So after the election debacle and the deal to form this Government of National Unity there came the wrangling over who would get which Ministerial posts and whether this would result in anything like power-sharing. Has it?

COLTART: It’s a very tentative and fragile process. ZANU were at pains to ensure that they got what I term the coercive ministries. They got the Ministry of Defence, they got the Ministry of Justice – so they control the courts, they got Foreign Affairs, and the Air Force and they’ve got the lion’s share of the police force. We went for the social ministries. We’ve got Education and Health and Sport and Water Delivery and so forth. And so the raw power still resides in Robert Mugabe. There’s no doubt about that. What we are seeking to do is through the constitutional reform process, and through delivering to people, through health and education, not only are we delivering services and improving the lives of people, but in political terms I think we’re building a lot more support for ourselves. But ultimately, raw political power is only going to change hands once we’ve got a new constitution, once we’ve got an agreement regarding electoral laws and once we have a free and fair election – and we’re some way off that.

RYAN: I’m speaking to David Coltart. He is Education and Sports Minister in Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity. He comes from the Movement for Democratic Change side, although that itself is in two factions, and we’ll come to that in a moment. It is 23 minutes past 10. He has told us already this morning that New Zealand Cricket is opening its mind to the idea of sports teams touring Zimbabwe again, perhaps starting with the New Zealand ‘A’ side in September, and will in the next few days perhaps confirm one way or another with that, an approach that appears to be endorsed also by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Coming to the constitutional change; if you’re arguing that it is time for sporting links to resume for all sorts of reasons, where is Zimbabwe a year on from this Government on the very constitutional change, the restoration of proper democratic institutions, that might bring confidence in doing so? What are the critical areas, and what progress in them?

COLTART: Ok, well in terms of the Agreement signed by the parties in September 2008 we all committed ourselves to a process of constitutional reform, which was meant to take 18 months. We are way behind our self-imposed schedule in that regard. There’ve been all sorts of mechanisms employed, mainly by ZANU-PF, but also by other factors, which have delayed this process. But the important phase of the constitutional reform process is just about to begin on 15^th June when the outreach programme commences. It’s going to be conducted by parliamentarians from all political parties. They’re going to go out into the countryside and see what the people of Zimbabwe want. It’s going to last about six weeks. Bear in mind Kathryn that Zimbabwe started this constitutional debate 12 years ago, so the public are already very well informed about the constitution, and there’s a broad consensus.

RYAN: The public input is one thing; the move to institute change is quite another. You point out, summarising it very nicely, that this is about the balance of powers and the separation of powers between the judiciary, the legislature and the government, and it is about the guarantee of free and fair elections, and it’s about the entrenchment of fundamental human rights. When it comes to implementing change in each and every one of those areas, is the willingness there from where you’ve just said the raw power is still vested?

COLTART: I don’t think that there’s a willingness at the very top of ZANU-PF to yield power. My sense is that they’re simply buying time. But against that there are very powerful forces arrayed. The region wants Zimbabwe to settle. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Zimbabwe’s been an albatross in the back of the region for over a decade. We’ve poured out three million refugees into South Africa alone and the region wants that to stop. The region also, fortunately, in the last 10-15 years has seen very wonderful changes in constitutions happen in every single one of our neighbours, so there is a regional precedent for a more democratic constitution – and the region has demanded that certain things change in our constitution. Also, the rank and file of ZANU-PF supporters want a change. They’ve seen the effects of too much power vested in one man, and so even amongst ZANU-PF MPs we find there is a desire to balance power more between executive and legislature.

RYAN: It seems nothing will remove Robert Mugabe from office apart from the fact that he is 86 and at some point time will. What would the departure of Robert Mugabe mean in Zimbabwe, and within ZANU-PF itself?

COLTART: Well, ZANU is held together by Robert Mugabe. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the glue that holds that party together. Certainly, sitting in Cabinet I see visibly that he has no peers within ZANU-PF. Even senior Cabinet Ministers defer to him on all sorts of things. When he makes a decision on a particular issue, they immediately fall in behind that decision. So when he goes, ZANU-PF is going to be in enormous trouble. There are two clear divisions, two clear factions within ZANU-PF; one headed by the Defence Minister, the other headed by the Vice-President. I think that we may have a short nasty period once Robert Mugabe has gone when these two factions seek to assert their authority. But let me stress that ZANU now has minority support within the country and there are some polls that have been done recently that show that even that minority support has been declining.

RYAN: What happens in the meantime then? We have no knowledge of how long he will remain healthy enough to stay at the helm. What is happening in areas such as oppression of people by the state, freedom of speech, freedom to organise, and the prospect in due course of another election?

COLTART: Let me paint the bad first of all. In the last 15 months since this Government has been set up, there have been ongoing human rights abuses, there are ongoing invasions of farms, ongoing detention of activists and the law continues to be selectively applied. If you’re an MDC you’re liable to arrest and prosecution for spurious offences; if you’re a ZANU-PF MP you can act with almost total impunity. So, I’m not glossing over the current situation. However, having said that, the human rights position in the country has improved remarkably since February last year. The number of disappearances has reduced dramatically, in fact I think that there have been hardly any. The incidence of torture has likewise dropped dramatically, and even though the land situation is still highly problematic, it is not as bad as it was.

RYAN: Are we still seeing people forced off the land?

COLTART: Oh yes, that goes on. Just the past week, the day before I left, former clients of mine – I’m a lawyer in Zimbabwe – reported to me that they’re being forced off. This has been done by hardliners seeking to break the Agreement. But against that, let me just say briefly that not only has the number of human rights abuses lessened, but we are making some progress for example regarding the media. Last week News Day, the first independent daily newspaper in over 5-6 years, started publication in the country. So it is tentative, but we are making progress.

RYAN: My next question for you was apart from the Agreement on a coalition government which did not reflect the actual democratic result of the election, has anything fundamentally changed?

COLTART: A lot had fundamentally changed. Let me use the Finance Ministry just as an example. ZANU-PF dispensed its patronage in the last 5 years primarily through the Reserve Bank. The Governor of the Reserve Bank printed money liberally, caused hyper-inflation – we ended up taking 21 noughts off the Zimbabwe currency; it became worthless. But notwithstanding that it was used as the prime means of patronage by ZANU-PF. Soldiers and youth militia were paid by this money that was just printed freely by the Governor. That has ended. We are now into cash budgeting. The Finance Minister, my colleague Tendai Biti, who’s an MDC lawyer, has taken over tight control and we are now determining how money is spent, and he has ensured that money is being spent on health and education, rather than the purchase of tear gas and bullets. And that is a demonstration of the enormous power that he is exercising.

RYAN: I’m speaking to David Coltart, a visiting member of Zimbabwe’s coalition Government. It’s just gone half past ten on Nine to Noon. And what of the MDC then, which now is part of the Government, and will continue undoubtedly to be the main political force for change at a constitutional level. You’re a member of one of two factions of the party – you’re in a different group from the biggest name of the opposition movement which is Morgan Tsvangirai. Over what did the Movement split and why did it fail to reconcile, despite efforts in 2005?

COLTART: Well let me say at the outset that we shot ourselves in our collective feet by splitting in 2005. We gave Robert Mugabe the best gift ever by dividing; but these things happen in politics.

Why did it happen? Well, at its core there was philosophical disagreement in terms of how to tackle this regime. There was a frustration in 2005 – people had hoped for a very quick transition in 2000. That is what should have happened had there been a free and fair election, and there were elements within the MDC who quite frankly had given up on using non-violent means to achieve a transition. That was at its core what caused the split in 2005. I’m not saying that Morgan Tsvangirai advocated violence – our complaint was that he didn’t deal with it effectively.

RYAN: Is there still a propensity toward violence within that other faction?

COLTART:  I think that there’s a propensity towards violence throughout our country. Sadly it’s become part of our political culture. It’s deeply ingrained in our society and we’ve seen even recently further outbreaks of violence in the larger faction where administrators were beaten up by youth. It bubbles beneath the surface in Zimbabwe, and the smaller faction’s view is that unless one adopts a zero tolerance attitude to this, because it’s part of our political culture it will emerge very readily. So yes, it’s an ongoing factor, and unfortunately it’s going to be with Zimbabwe for at least another generation. It’s one of the issues I’m trying to tackle as Education Minister to change our culture.

RYAN: Your background is interesting because it is as a human rights lawyer, but you’re interestingly also a former policeman in what was then Rhodesia, which one might have imagined was during interesting times. What was your experience of policing at that time?

COLTART: Of course that has had a great role in forming my world view. I was conscripted, as all white then-Rhodesians were, as a 17-year old. Just before I turned 18 I was conscripted and I went into the police and into the vortex of the civil war, and it was a deeply traumatic experience for me. I went straight out of school into a war situation and what it did for me was root in my psyche a determination never again to be involved in a war situation, to use every possible means to use non-violent methods to resolve conflict. And I never want to go through that type of thing again.

RYAN: Did you do things that you now can’t believe you did?

COLTART: Fortunately I was a policeman; I was not in the army and so I never killed a person or came close to that. But of course I saw dreadful things. I had to go to the scenes of contacts and see the aftermath of contacts between guerrillas and the army, and it was a shocking thing to experience.

RYAN: What will bring full democracy and free and fair elections to Zimbabwe? We look next door to South Africa and life is far from perfect there, but an extraordinary threshold was crossed. What will it take for Zimbabwe?

COLTART:  I think first of all it will take time. We need to recognise that to root democracy in any nation takes decades; it takes generations. We’ve seen that in the United States. I’ve read a wonderful book recommended by Barak Obama recently about the team of rivals – about Lincoln in the 1860s – and it’s just a reminder to me that it’s taken a long, long time for America to get where it is. The same goes for New Zealand and every other country. Democracy is not an event, it’s a process. So first of all it takes time, and we are a fledgling democracy, we’re a young country – younger than New Zealand.

Secondly, it takes determination; principled determination from patriots to commit themselves over a period of time. In the Zimbabwean context, this is where non-violence is so important. If you look at Zimbabwe’s history we shouldn’t just look at the last 30 years, we should look at the 20 years prior to that, under the Rhodesian Front lead by Ian Smith. Zimbabwe lost its way in the 1950s – and this is where actually New Zealand has a proud link with Zimbabwe in the form of Sir Garfield Todd who was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia up until 1958. He was then ousted from office. He was taking Zimbabwe in a more liberal path that would have evolved into a multi-racial majority-ruled country. Unfortunately he was thrown out of office and replaced by hard-liners, by right-wingers, by racists who laid the foundations for the authoritarian state we are dealing with today.

RYAN: There’s no real fundamental change is there till Robert Mugabe dies – can we conclude that? Or is there anything – you’ve known him all these years and seen what has happened to him and with him – is there anything that will move him down the democratic path?

COLTART:  I don’t think it is right to place all the blame on Robert Mugabe. The problems in our country are deep rooted, as I’ve just said, and there are many structural problems. There’s a whole culture that we have to work with that goes way beyond Robert Mugabe. That’s the negative. The positive is that in fact there is a broad consensus in the country now. We’ve seen the results of 50 years of authoritarian rule, and the vast majority of people in the country understand the necessity of democracy; the necessity to limit the power of any one person. Even ZANU-PF now has put up posters in Harare saying that there should be presidential term limits. So yes, Robert Mugabe is a huge icon and in one sense a major obstacle, but he’s in his twilight years so I’m not actually depressed about Zimbabwe. I see that we have this unique opportunity through the constitutional reform process, through this peaceful – yes fragile – process that we’re going through. But we are progressing.

RYAN: David I don’t want to hark back to something that’s obviously been very distressing for you, and I’m very glad to hear that your daughter’s doing well, but goodness – a lion attack. It was just in the last few weeks?

COLTART: It happened on 1^st May. We were visiting a game farm which breeds lions, and unfortunately our daughter went for a walk with a relative of the owner to a breeding pen and she put her finger through the fence and this lion in flash grabbed her hand and pulled her whole arm in. I came running within seconds, but by then the damage was done. Thankfully, the artery was missed and we casevacked her to a very good hospital in Harare and she’s well on the way to recovery.

RYAN: We were talking about the recovery of the health system to some degree and you said that you’ve got your currency crisis under control with use of the US Dollar, but for most Zimbabweans today – huge unemployment, still food shortages? Still fuel shortages? Still people pouring across the borders? Or has that eased?

COLTART: The pouring of people across the border has eased, in fact in some ways has been reversed. As Education Minister I’ve established that, to give you an example, we lost 20,000 teachers in 2007 and 2008 but I had a report last week from within my Ministry that we’re now getting applications at a rate of 900 per month of teachers wanting to come back into the system. Now I’m not sure that applies to all sectors, but we’ve certainly stopped the exodus. As regards health and education and the supply of food, of course one doesn’t reverse the devastation done to the economy overnight. In fact this is probably going to take a decade to sort out, but we’ve stopped the haemorrhaging. There is food back in the stores, people are no longer starving. The vast majority of people do not have access to the same medical care I did, but they do get a modicum of health care. We’ve certainly got a better delivery of drugs into the system. So when we compare ourselves to where we were in February last year the progress has been remarkable. But when we compare ourselves to where the country was ten years ago – well, we’re still in a state of crisis.

RYAN: Thank you for your time today. David Coltart – Education and Sports Minister in Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity. He is from the Movement for Democratic Change side, which has always been the opposition party. He is in New Zealand lobbying New Zealand Cricket to reinstate ties and it sounds like he’s had a positive response this morning with the possibility of a New Zealand ‘A’ tour in September, still to be confirmed in the coming days.