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By Root 3079 0

and so my VC10 was flying lower than usual — too low for comfort, since at one point we were fired on with missiles by RENAMO. Fortunately they missed. I was met at the airport — with another floodlit tribal greeting — by President Banda. It was an unforgettable occasion. He was an extraordinary man. Although probably in his early nineties, I found him, in my talks, bright, alert and humorous. Almost alone, he had built up Malawi, a poor country, into one with sound finances and sensibly developed agriculture. I stayed with him in his official residence, the Sanjika Palace, where I would come across him wearing dark formal dress and a black hat which he would doff when I met him in the corridor. There was another, less agreeable, side to his regime. Opponents quickly found themselves in jail and traders who, like several of my own Asian constituents, tried to get their money out of the country had their property confiscated.

Early next morning I helicoptered out to the Mankhokwe Refugee Camp on the border with Mozambique. Most of the flight was over mountains which then dropped away to a plain on which a vast refugee camp housing over 600,000 people had been built. These refugees had fled from the civil war in Mozambique. What they told me about the atrocities committed and the reign of fear created in their villages by RENAMO was truly horrifying. I saw some of those who had just recently fled: they had not eaten for several days and had travelled by night. Their eyes had that deadness which total exhaustion brings. After this, I could never be tempted to regard RENAMO as anti-communist freedom fighters in the way that some right-wing Americans continued to. They were terrorists.

That night President Banda hosted a state banquet for me. It was a memorable occasion, not least because it lasted over five hours. Each new dish which was brought in was presented first to the President before being served to his guests. My own gaze fell on a giant chocolate cockerel: I can never resist chocolate. Zulus sang and danced throughout the banquet. Then Dr Banda rose to speak. An hour later his account of his life and experiences had only reached 1945. Some of his guests had actually fallen asleep. At this point the lady who acted as his hostess gave him a hard nudge and reminded him of the time. We got through the next forty-three years in five minutes flat. In consideration of those present I cut down my own speech accordingly.

Hardly anyone knew that from Blantyre I intended to fly to Windhoek, Namibia: the press who were with us were only told after we had taken off. The UN plan to bring Namibia (formerly South-West Africa) to democratic independence had been drawn up in the late 1970s but only now, as a result of American efforts to broker a settlement of the Angolan civil war — to which we had given strong support — was it possible to put it into effect. Security Council Resolution 632 of 16 February 1989 was to be implemented from Saturday 1 April — the day on which I arrived in Windhoek — with a view to elections later in the year.

On my arrival I was met by the three key figures — the UN Special Representative (Mr Ahtisaari), the UN Force Commander (General Prem Chand) and the South African Administrator-General (Mr Pienaar). Denis and I then visited and had lunch with the small British Signals contingent in their base camp, visited the Rossing Uranium Mine — where I was much impressed by the housing and welfare services provided for the employees — and then returned to Windhoek. By now it was clear that the whole UN solution to the Namibian problem was at mortal risk. In flagrant disregard of previous undertakings that no armed personnel would come south of the 16th Parallel (well within Angola) hundreds of SWAPO (South-West Africa People’s Organization) troops had crossed the border into Namibia with military equipment. I was not in the least convinced by the reaction of the SWAPO leader — Sam Nujoma — who claimed that his organization was faithfully abiding by the cease-fire and that the so-called invaders must be South