The Sunday Mail
Lincoln Towindo and Tinashe Farawo
British authorities are pressuring Zimbabwe to make annual pension pay-outs of at least US$25 million to its citizens who were civil servants under Ian Smith. Ironically, Britain has itself reneged obligations to compensate former commercial farmers whose properties were acquired under land reforms.
Approximately 2 000 British citizens — 400 now resident in the UK — served in the Rhodesian civil service and want pensions from Zimbabwe under the 1979 Lancaster House agreement.
Zimbabwe paid out the pensions until 2003 and some of beneficiaries included Rhodesian military personnel who fought to oppose majority rule. Estimates by the British Foreign Office six years ago said Zimbabwe should fork out no less than £25 million annually to 2 000 ex-civil servants. The figure falls by £2 million yearly due to deaths.
In a letter of demand to Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa last December, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Mark Simmonds said Zimbabwe should release the money. But Minister Goche said Government would not be arm-twisted into paying. When most British colonies became independent, the British government and the emerging government of the territory would sign Public Officers’ Agreements (POA).
Such agreements were designed to protect the pensions of expatriate public service officers of Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS) by ensuring the pensions were paid by the majority government on similar terms as before.
The money would be remitted at the prevailing exchange rate.
The British government, however, refused to make a POA in the case of Zimbabwe, arguing that the civil servants were employed by the Rhodesian government that unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965.
Britain then pushed for payment commitments to be included in the Lancaster House talks.
Earlier this year, British government officials met Zimbabwe’s representatives after Mr Simmonds was taken to task over the pensions in Parliament.
Zimbabwe’s top diplomat in London, Ambassador Gabriel Machinga, has reportedly received inquiries to this effect.
Responding to a question from Conservative legislator for Christchurch, Mr Christopher Chope, on what steps the British government was taking to “end that default”, Mr Simmonds insisted that Zimbabwe should pay off the pensioners. “The payment of Zimbabwe public service pensions is the responsibility of the Government of Zimbabwe,” he said. “We appreciate the frustration and financial burden the non-payment of pensions puts on many pensioners and have continually pressed the Government of Zimbabwe to fulfil their obligations . . .
“We continue to pursue a resolution to the non-payment of Zimbabwe civil servant pensions and are in regular contact with the interested parties, including the Overseas Service Pensioners Association (OSPA) and the Federal Pensioners Association in Harare.
“UK officials last spoke with the director of pensions at the end of January and are still pursuing a response from the Zimbabwean Civil Service Commission to our letter from December 2013. We have also raised the issue since with other interlocutors, including the Zimbabwean Ambassador in London.”
OSPA is a British quasi-government arm responsible for safeguarding pension payments to British citizens who served in former colonies.
According to a document prepared by OSPA and seen by The Sunday Mail, “Ministers have agreed that the Zimbabwe public service pensioners were ‘Crown Servants’, and have accepted that there is some moral responsibility for them. But they have denied legal responsibility and have indicated that the Treasury would never agree to accept any financial liability.
The Zimbabwe public service pensioners have pointed out that they can be distinguished from all other categories, primarily by reference to their unique mention in the Zimbabwe Constitution.
“But British ministers insist on describing them as ‘locally appointed officers’ who therefore fall outside the pension protection arrangements under the 1973 Overseas Pensions Act. That insistence on the officers having been ‘locally appointed’ takes no account of how the officers were actually treated.”
The document continues: “They were recruited from Britain by the Southern Rhodesian government, had their passages to Rhodesia paid for them from government funds, were encouraged to take home leave back in Britain by being allowed to accumulate and take leave for up to six months and being given their rail fares from Rhodesia to South African ports so that they could travel back to Britain by sea, and at the end of their government service they left Rhodesia and came back to live in Britain.
“Thus, in every important respect they had conditions of service that corresponded to the conditions of British expatriate officers in the colonial service appointed to serve in Northern Rhodesia, except only that they did not have their sea-passages paid to Britain on leave or retirement, and that their formal appointment was by the lawful government of the British self-governing colony and not by the British colonial office.
“Yet these two differences have been used to justify immensely different treatment of their pensions. These Zimbabwe Public Service officers are completely and identifiably distinct from other locally-appointed civil servants who served on local conditions in other colonial territories. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.”
Minister Goche confirmed receiving a letter of demand, which was also copied to Minister Chinamasa.
Minister Goche said Zimbabwe would not pay the pensions due to debilitating Western economic sanctions.
“We have seen the letter. As Government, it is our desire to pay all our obligations but the sanctions imposed by Britain and her allies have curtailed our capacity to pay most of these obligations.
“We are even failing to pay our local pensioners because of the economic sanctions they have imposed, so how are we going to afford to pay British citizens whose government imposed sanctions on us?
“We used to pay them but now we can no longer afford to.”
The minister said authorities were preparing a detailed response to the British government.
