UK weighed merits of trying to oust ‘depressingly fit’ Robert Mugabe, records show

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UK officials grew so frustrated by the challenges of dealing with an ageing but “depressingly fit” Robert Mugabe in 2004 that they weighed up the pros and cons of using military force to remove the Zimbabwean leader from power, newly released documents reveal.

Although quickly discounted, the option was listed alongside others as officials grappled over how to respond to a multi-faceted crisis in the southern African country that had once been a British colony.

Zimbabwe was suffering hyperinflation, the sometimes violent occupation of white-owned farms and election rigging and harassment of the opposition by Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

Mugabe, who turned 80 in 2004, had become increasingly dictatorial, twice having his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, arrested on serious criminal charges. Mugabe had defeated Tsvangirai in a presidential election in 2002, but polling had been marred by vote-rigging allegations.

Documents released from the National Archives show that the crisis left officials, diplomats and the then UK prime minister Tony Blair perplexed about their next steps. They were particularly concerned about what to do if, as expected, Mugabe again claimed victory in parliamentary elections due in March 2005.

Brian Donnelly, the departing UK high commissioner in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, wrote in a farewell memo in July 2004: “If our best efforts fail and Mugabe wins again, then I think we should be ready to undertake some radical reappraisal if Zimbabwe is to be saved from another three years of turbulence and decline.”

Among the problems that Donnelly identified was that Mugabe showed no signs of being forced out by ill health. “Mugabe remains depressingly fit and focused on his own agenda,” Donnelly wrote in his memo.

Mugabe blamed many of Zimbabwe’s problems on the UK, which was the colonial power until a unilateral declaration of independence by the then Southern Rhodesia’s white rulers in 1965.

The UK negotiated the transition from the white-led government of Ian Smith that first brought Mugabe to power in 1980.

Donnelly’s dispatch provided the basis for a subsequent paper that Kara Owen, private secretary to then foreign secretary Jack Straw, sent to Downing Street, setting out options.

Under the heading “Removing Mugabe”, Owen wrote: “We know from Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia that changing a government and/or its bad policies is almost impossible from the outside.”

Referring to the previous year’s toppling of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein by a US-led coalition, she added: “If we really want to change the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe, we have to do to Mugabe what we have just done to Saddam.”

However, after weighing up the likely cost in casualties and the expected reluctance of other countries to support any action, the paper ruled out intervention. “This is not a serious option,” Owen wrote.

Yet the document found other potential approaches also unattractive. Tightened sanctions, a freeze on Zimbabwean assets held in the UK or a breaking off of diplomatic relations could all backfire, the memo concluded.

“While they are unlikely to change things in Zimbabwe, they would give Mugabe a stick with which to beat us,” Owen wrote.

The document also noted that, while it might have to be attempted following the parliamentary elections, closer engagement with the Mugabe regime was not immediately acceptable.

The paper instead recommended that the UK stick to trying to isolate the Mugabe government internationally, while offering discreet support for the democratic opposition.

In a handwritten note under a memo forwarding the paper to him, Blair largely endorsed the idea of criticising Mugabe until the elections, while re-engaging afterwards.

Mugabe remained in power until he was ousted, aged 93, by a coup in 2017. He died in a hospital in Singapore in 2019, aged 95. Tsvangirai died in 2018.

Mugabe’s former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was installed as a result of the coup and still leads a Zanu-PF government.