By MICHAEL VALPY 


Wednesday, March 6, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A13

The last time the prime ministers of Canada and Britain opposed each other at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was in Vancouver in 1987. The issue was South African apartheid, South African political terror. The issue was human rights. The issue was morality.

Canada's Brian Mulroney defied the opposition of Britain's powerful Margaret Thatcher and vigorously pressed the Commonwealth to impose punitive sanctions against the South African racist regime. "Canada," he said, "cannot be [merely] benignly interested in the greatest moral debate that is going on. Canada has to be on the high ground and provide leadership to its friends and allies around the world."

Referring to the risk of the Commonwealth being deeply divided over South Africa (Ms. Thatcher was threatening to walk out), Mr. Mulroney's response was a shrug: "Unanimity is a splendid commodity but one can survive without it."

The noble lion has become a mouse in 15 years.

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week in Coolum, Australia, the issue was Zimbabwean political terror. The issue was human rights, morality, a state that kills political opponents, corrupts elections, undermines judicial independence and restricts freedom of press and of assembly.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair unequivocally wanted an immediate suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth. "What is happening there is completely unacceptable, an outrage in terms of democracy," he said.

Jean Chrétien undermined him, and Canadian officials boasted of his success. "This was Canada's day," said one.

The Canadian delegation made clear that the government's prime objective was the maintenance of unanimity, the bureaucratic niceness of keeping everyone at the table, the objective of avoiding a black-white divide. The high road of morality? An attractive commodity, maybe, but not necessary for survival.

Some Commonwealth African members supported the Zimbabwean government and its 78-year-old tyrannical President Robert Mugabe -- and did not like the British government and others being critical of muscular African politics.

Therefore, the Canadian delegation turned its attention to a compromise Commonwealth position: Wait until Zimbabwe's March 9-10 elections are over and then decide if the country should be kicked out.

The reasoning is difficult to follow.

As Commonwealth leaders were approving their unanimous communiqué in Australia (they issued a statement expressing deep concern over Zimbabwe's election and urging all parties to refrain from violence), pro-government supporters in Zimbabwe burned opponents' houses and attacked their occupants with axes. A European Union election-monitoring team already had left the country in disgust. And Mr. Chrétien readily acknowledged to reporters that the election will be "probably not fair."

A spokesman for Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, put it differently. "There will be a bloodbath," said Sekai Holland -- whether Mr. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party legitimately win the election or are defeated and steal the election.

Before heading off to Australia, Mr. Chrétien declared: "Canada will be in the forefront to ensure that democracy is maintained in Zimbabwe."

And Canada could have been in the forefront. During the struggle against apartheid, former prime minister Brian Mulroney built an enormous reservoir of goodwill for Canada in black Africa. Indeed, if any so-called white Commonwealth government does not have to defend its bona fides, it is Canada's.

Mr. Mulroney's government imposed Canadian sanctions and pushed the Commonwealth into imposing sanctions against South Africa. He was the first Western leader to visit the front-line states confronting the South African regime -- Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania. He was seen as the first leader to break the West's Cold War mindset on South Africa, the mindset that accepted the racist government because it was a bulwark against Communism. He was seen as the Western leader who would plead the case of black Africa to America and Europe.

As Mr. Mugabe's government two years ago deteriorated rapidly into ugly tyranny, Mr. Chrétien, acting on the well of high regard for Canada that Mr. Mulroney built, could have arranged a meeting with the Zimbabwean President.

He could have gone to Mr. Mugabe with the promise of a package of aid. He could have helped develop a program to buy land from white commercial farmers and redistribute it to blacks -- Zimbabwe's critical issue apart from the corruptness of the Mugabe inner circle.

He could have put Africa generally, and Zimbabwe in particular, on the agenda of the G7 industrialized countries, and worked on Zimbabwe's behalf to attract investment money from the British and the Germans, the two countries with the greatest interest in that part of the world.

He could have worked behind the scenes to convince Zimbabwe's neighbouring government in South Africa to play a stronger role, knowing -- for example -- how appalled former South African president Nelson Mandela is by Mr. Mugabe's behaviour. Mr. Chrétien could have told Mr. Mugabe: "Here is all that Canada is prepared to do. Now clean up your act or we'll lead the charge against you."

That would have been leadership.

Even going to Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and declaring that Zimbabwe no longer belonged in the Commonwealth would have been leadership.

"We have postponed the day of judgment on Zimbabwe and I think that is the wrong thing to do," said Tony Blair. "We should have provided a far stronger statement and backed it up with action."

Or as New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said: "I hope we don't have another [meeting] like this one, where, notwithstanding the evidence of a failure to observe the fundamental principles of the Commonwealth, a member state is still sitting around the table.

"When we have a declaration of principles, when we have a declaration of how we will act, when the principles are breached, and then when the Commonwealth fails to act, it looks slightly silly."

More than silly.
Michael Valpy was The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent, based in Harare, from 1983 to 1987. He met and interviewed Robert Mugabe several times.