Crikey

The Government has form on being firm on Zimbabwe. Its uncompromising stance on Cricket Australia’s tour to that country is no exception.

But as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer meets with Cricket Australia officials today to implore that they pull out of the tour, the Government’s hardline view is compromised by the fact that children of some of the corrupt regime’s leaders remain as students and residents in Australia, as reported previously by Crikey.

This morning, Downer also met the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, who is in Australia to give voice to Zimbabwe’s plight. “There is so much suffering in that country,” he has said. “[Mugabe] has become really evil.”

When will the Australian Government detail its plans for ensuring that money isn’t siphoned out of Zimbabwe via Zanu-PF officials’ children? And when will the hypocrisy of their residence in Australia reach tipping point? It must surely be coming.

Britain is a couple of steps ahead of Australia in its commitment to deport Zanu-PF leaders’ children. And there are indications that these sanctions might actually be hitting Zimbabwe officials where it hurts: their children’s future.

Amid serious moves to have scores of Zanu-PF chiefs’ children deported from Western schools and universities, “an embattled Zimbabwe Government has approached Britain’s Cambridge examining board, cap in hand, indicating it was ready to revoke an eight-year-old decree by President Robert Mugabe’s regime barring pupils in Zimbabwe from taking the internationally recognised examinations,” reports The Zimbabwean.

“The move is part of covert manoeuvres by Mugabe’s embattled regime to shield the chiefs’ children, who are set to be deported soon under a proposed new sanctions regime, from having to convert hastily to a local examination of dubious value.”

Most Zimbabweans, of course, have never had the option of such an escape.

Foreign Minister Downer gave a strong Question Time showing on Tuesday:

[There] is no doubt that President Mugabe is trashing democracy in Zimbabwe … the economy has been completely crippled. Eighty per cent of Zimbabweans now have no job; life expectancy has fallen, since 1990, from 61 years to just 33 years; and, inflation is now at 2200%. It is a great tragedy… It is certainly the view of the Government that we do not want the world’s greatest cricket team to be caught up in a propaganda exercise for a wretched regime like President Mugabe’s…

So, is the Government considering further sanctions against this “wretched regime”? And specifically, will it move to put sanctions in place against Zanu-PF family members? For now, the DFAT response remains general:

• We are looking at options to tighten the sanctions-regime among our suite of responses to the situation in Zimbabwe.

• This issue, among others, is under consideration and there are a range of factors to be worked through carefully and considered.
• Australia is in the forefront of international action against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.