Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [327]
The success of this visit convinced me that I should make a more ambitious foray into Africa the following year and this was now arranged. I would go first to Morocco — which is essentially part of the Arab world — and then on to Zimbabwe, Malawi, possibly Namibia, and Nigeria once more.
I already had the greatest regard for King Hassan of Morocco, who was always underrated as a player in Middle Eastern politics. I had met him in London two years earlier when he was on a state visit. On this occasion our talk was mainly of the Arab-Israeli dispute and military co-operation between Britain and Morocco. As well as being enormously cultivated — he speaks half a dozen languages and can make an impromptu speech in any of them — the King has an icy nerve. When I heard from him about the measures he took to protect himself from further assassination attempts I understood that he, like me, understood what it meant to live as a terrorist target.
Then I flew to Lagos. This was just a stop-over visit and General Babangida came to the airport to have lunch with me. I was glad to learn that he was not just pressing ahead with, but actually toughening, the economic reform programme on which Nigeria had embarked. With our support, Nigeria now had the approval of the IMF and its main western creditors and had secured a rescheduling of debt to its public sector creditors. It is never an easy task to govern a country like Nigeria — it is a somewhat artificial creation divided between the Muslim North and the Christian and pagan South — let alone to do so under conditions of economic austerity.
I arrived at Harare, Zimbabwe, at 10 o’clock that night, to be met by Robert Mugabe and a floodlit, noisy tribal welcome. It was nearly ten years since I had convened the Lancaster House Conference which led to Mr Mugabe peacefully taking power in Zimbabwe. Since then Britain had provided more than £200 million in aid and military training. Britain was also the largest investor. Zimbabwe could still boast of one of the strongest African economies outside South Africa. But Mr Mugabe’s doctrinaire socialism, suspicion of foreign investment and reluctance to accept the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank were taking their toll. I had little reason to expect that I could persuade him to my point of view on the South African sanctions question, but I hoped that I might succeed in bringing him to accept the need for changes in economic policy. At my talks with him the following morning I sought to do this by describing my own economic policies in the United Kingdom where we were reducing the role of the state in the economy and encouraging free enterprise: this, I said, was why our economy was growing and enabling us to provide aid for Zimbabwe. I also drew attention to a recent World Bank study which showed that those African countries which followed programmes recommended by the IMF did better than those which did not. Mr Mugabe recognized, at least in principle, the need to devise an investment code so as to give asssurance to foreign investors. But I was not convinced that the rest of my message really went home. Much of our discussion, however, was about the situation in neighbouring African states, not least Mozambique. I was shortly to learn more about this.
Later that morning I flew out with President Mugabe to the training camp at Nyanga on the border with Mozambique. There I was met by President Chissano of Mozambique and the three of us had lunch in a tent on a bluff overlooking a deep valley. Then I watched the British troops training Mozambique soldiers to fight the RENAMO guerillas. I could not help reflecting how impossible this prospect would have seemed back in 1979 when I was trying to bring Rhodesia back to peace and legality. It would probably have seemed hardly less improbable to those of my left-wing critics who considered my stand against sanctions as a kind of racist impulse.
The following evening (Thursday 30 March) I flew from Harare to Blantyre, Malawi. The journey was short