Trade sanctions, dirty money and the children of the damned

In an interview with Tony Jones of the ABC’s LateLine, Mary Robinson, president of Oxfam, likened the situation in Zimbabwe to South Africa under apartheid, having “got so bad that we have to think of it in terms of something akin to the devastation … apartheid caused in South Africa”.

Yet she was undecided over whether or not Australia’s cricket team should go to Harare to play the Zimbabweans. “Maybe,” she said, “a sporting route is one way of tackling” the “huge human rights travesty … [with] the poorest blacks affected …”

Is there a similar conflict with the children of Zimbabwe’s leaders studying in Australia?

Some protest at this, saying they should be repatriated, their links with the Zimbabwean regime ruling them out from entry, even for study purposes. Yet just as, it seems, Mary Robinson believed Australian cricketers in Zimbabwe might, by their sporting presence, bring about change in the regime, could that possibility lie with educating Zimbabweans here?

Is a non-authoritarian ethos seeping back into Zimbabwe possible through interaction with Australian youth and in Australian tertiary institutions? Could human rights, the values of compassion, empathy, consideration and respect for human life filter in to the psyche of Robert Mugabe and his cohort, through attitudes learned, the ideas and ideals inculcated in their children through an Australian education?

At Cambridge in the 1970s, white students from South Africa noticeably recoiled when they observed black African students on Cambridge streets, in Cambridge pubs, in skiffs on the Cam, or walking along the Backs. White South African students cringed when they shared lecture theatres with their black African sisters and brothers, physically repulsed by their presence.

As a student observing this, I thought what an antidote it was to the white supremacist policies and practices of South Africa, for the white citizens to be obliged to share the space in this way, having to accept the equality of black South Africans, Kenyans, Ugandans and more. What better than to oblige the South Africans to accept a common humanity and equal rights, not white-superior rights, for their black college and classmates. Surely it would make a difference to their assumption of superiority - especially when black students excelled?

Does a parallel lie with Zimbabwean students studying here?

And what of the “Hitler’s children” argument - that they ought not to be, and cannot be, blamed for the sins of their parents? That just as the children of Hitler’s henchmen cannot bear the burden of responsibility for parents who condemned millions to concentration camps, hard-labour and the gas chambers, so Mugabe’s children cannot be blamed for the crimes committed against their fellow Zimbabweans?

Casting out children for the evil done by their parents is repugnant. Yet is this an answer to the receipt of fees paid out of funds stolen from Zimbabwe’s citizens, purloined and extorted? Is it an answer to the inclusion in our GDP of Zimbabwean blood money?

On May 17, 2007 at a doorstop interview, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, was asked about Zimbabwe:

Journalist: Zimbabwe Information Minister (inaudible) has said Australia is a terrorist nation and accused John Howard of being a war criminal. What is your response to that?

Mr Downer: I think everybody knows that those kinds of statements are not to be taken seriously. It’s so obviously not true. I think making those kinds of allegations, making those kinds of statements, coming from the Minister of a Government tells you a great deal about what sort of a government we are dealing with here. This is a dictatorial regime which has plunged its country into almost total poverty and has abused, very seriously, human rights of anybody who dares oppose or criticise the Government. So I think it is a tragedy what has happened in Zimbabwe and the sooner the regime of President Mugabe comes to an end, the better. Those kind of statements - you hear that kind of a rant from the Soviet block during the 1950s and 1960s - you don’t hear much of it anymore - it is good you don’t really.

Throughout the month of May 2007, Downer made no fewer than 12 statements about the Zimbabwe cricket tour. After dithering over the matter, on May 13, 2007 Prime Minister John Howard banned (7.30 Report) the scheduled one-day cricket series tour. “Well,” he said, “the Government through the Foreign Minister has written to the organisation, to Cricket Australia, instructing that the tour will not go ahead … The Mugabe regime at present is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents, and I have no doubt that if this tour goes ahead, it will be an enormous boost to this grubby dictator …”.

The Reserve Bank gazettes the names of persons listed for “smart sanctions” - no travel to Australia, any assets in Australia frozen, any financial transactions with Australia banned. Mugabe’s name appears, as do names of other “key” Zimbabweans who are a part of his regime and who profit from it.

Although the students in Australia are adults, we can be assured that the money paying for their fees, fares and living expenses comes out of the pockets of their parents and, hence, is purloined from the people of Zimbabwe. Even where these adults pay their own way, their money is tainted by its and their connection with Mugabe’s regime. Reportedly, some students have direct links of their own - as independent supporters or direct participants in the government.

Hence, according to Australia’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, Australia and Australian institutions are taking money from a “dictatorial regime” abusing “very seriously” the human rights of anybody daring to “oppose or criticise the Government”. This money comes from a regime “behaving like the Gestapo” towards political opponents, which has “plunged [the] country into almost total poverty …” In this, they echo Mary Robinson - albeit their words more florid.

If a one-day cricket tour would be “an enormous boost” to the “grubby dictator” Robert Mugabe, how to class the week by week, month by month, year after year education of the tyrants’ children?

To send them home is not to blame them for the wrongs of their parents. Rather, it is to say that whatever the children have or have not done, we cannot profit from the poverty and ravaging of the entire population - apart from those at the top, whose “Gestapo-like tactics” have purloined the money to pay into Australian coffers.

To deny them an Australian education is not to say that they are responsible for the crimes of their fathers against the families of their fellow Zimbabweans. It is to deny a “boost” to the “grubby dictator” - that Australia is prepared to accept the money and turn its head to where it came from, and how and from whom it was got.

Sadly, the argument that they might learn something here, about human rights, positive race relations, compassion and the value of fair distribution of resources and assets doesn’t wash in today’s Australia.

The difference between the rich and the poor might not precisely mirror the difference in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. But as economic analyses show, with corporate “leaders” paying themselves in millions and those at the bottom scrabbling for a living, we are well on the way there.

As for human rights - we live in a country which does not endorse the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and reportedly is seeking to persuade others - such as Canada - to follow.

It is not only David Hicks who has experienced the lack of human rights and ignorance of civil rights which now pervades this country - which once held a strong position in the human and civil rights field, one which will take decades to recover.

It is hypocritical for Australia to declaim against Mugabe and his regime, while taking the money that buys an education for children of the regime’s dictators. Sending these students home would bring a blast from Mugabe, no doubt. But better a blast against us from a “black-shirted dictator”. It would be a change from the blasts that should be coming our way from countries that continue to adhere to human rights principles and recognition of civil liberties.