The Sunday Mail
Hawkish United Kingdom parliamentarian Kate Hoey says she may not seek re-election as chair of the hostile All-Party Group on Zimbabwe (APGZ), which has pushed for punitive action against Harare over its revolutionary land reform programme.
While it will not necessarily translate to a more sensible British government policy on Zimbabwe, it could offer a window of opportunity for moderates to tone down on the hard line position Hoey advocated over the years.
Hoey played a key role in pushing illegal and widely discredited British and European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe as she vainly sought to push President Mugabe’s Government out of office.
APGZ is coalition of UK parliamentarians that has supported the opposition MDC-T and several civil society organisations in Zimbabwe.
Hoey has been a Labour Party MP for Vauxhall, South London since 1989 and was part of the Tony Blair administration that repudiated its Lancaster House obligations to fund land reform in Zimbabwe.
She told The Sunday Mail from her South London base last week that: “We will have to re-register and re-form the all-party group when Parliament returns. There are strict rules about cross-party membership and it has to be open to new MPs. It is unlikely that group will be active again until June 2015 now and I may not stand for chair again.
“I have been a chair a long time so it is always good for new people to do it so I will wait and see if there is someone keen.”
Asked what her gripe with President Mugabe was and why she supported the illegal sanctions, Hoey evasively responded: “I am not interested in what any Zanu-PF bigwig thinks of me and I have nothing to clear from my name.”
Hoey has confessed to sneaking into Zimbabwe in 2003 and 2005 to advance her anti-President Mugabe campaign.
Hoey also sneaked into Zimbabwe during the July 31, 2013 elections and met opposition parties and activists whom she described as her “friends”. She later claimed that the elections, which Zanu-PF resoundingly won and which the progressive international community gave the thumbs-up, were rigged before she demanded restoration of some of the sanctions the EU had lifted that year.
In 2013, Hoey moved a motion in the UK parliament calling for condemnation of the 1978 shooting down of Air Rhodesia Viscount RH827 by Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army guerrillas during the Second Chimurenga.
