The following is a letter from John "Aussie" Austin to Nick Hurd MP in response to news reports that the British Government is considering a billion dollar aid package to assist Zimbabwe.  (This added to the website on April 5, 2008)

LONDON        03 April 2008        Thursday

Dear Nick,

I am sure you & many of your colleagues will already be well aware that many former Zimbabwean pensioners forced out of that country have, for some many years now, not received a penny of their pensions.... particularly pensions earned by former employees of the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia government, forces, and statututory corporations. Furthermore, most of these now unpaid pensions have never been adjusted at all in terms of Zimbabwe's mind boggling inflation (now officially over 100 000% and unofficially much more than double that number). I am only one of many of them....... My own Zimbabwean pension used to be around £180 per month when I arrived here in 1988 - having been forced into early retirement via wrongful detention-without-trial for two years (1986-1988), after 21 years service rising to Head, Customs & Excise, Harare (my retiring civil service grade equates to somewhere between Asst Secretary to Under Secretary in the UK).

That pension(?) was part of the historic 1979 Lancaster House package, most fine print of which has long been reneged upon by the Mugabe regime. Moreover, that which the regime has not directly & deliberately disrupted has additionally been rendered worthless by the systematic criminal wreckage of the Zimbabwean economy by it's own regime. I personally know of a number of folk (including widows) who have worked all their lives in Zimbabwe, only to find themselves now penniless in the UK..... and eking out a living on the benefit regime here (these are the lucky ones - those who were born here or have some sort of ancestral right to return here). Many of the unlucky ones live in near poverty or actual poverty in South Africa or elsewhere, and in Zimbabwe too. Quite simply, this is just not right. Moreso, when you understand that the Mugabe regime has simultaneously rewarded so-called war veterans etcetera with ongoing multi million dollar pensions.... I say "so-called" because the age of many of them clearly makes their claims to being "veterans" of anything highly questionable. Moreover, I have no doubt that the pensions of the outgoing regime will be at the top of their priority lists whilst haggling deals concerning their relinquishment of power.

My 1988 Z$486 per month non-index-linked Lancaster House pension that used to yield around £180 in 1988, and which shrunk to about £3 before it was stopped altogether years ago by the Zimbabwe government, will today be worthless if re-instated. I say this because the Z$ has had three zeros removed twice in recent years. So, my non-index-linked pension of Z$486 now amounts to Z$0.000486 in now Zim currency. As I write, an egg (yes one egg) costs over Z$5million. So, if the current Head of Harare Customs & Excise (who will be a ZANUpf appointee) were to retire post Mugabe, I doubt very much whether he would accept a monthly pension of Z$0.000486...... so why should I and the other surviving Zimbabwean pensioners. And if not, why then should we approve of UK taxpayers' money being used to reward those who have stolen from us?

Note: Not just UK taxpayers' money, but all donor countries' taxpayers' money - for the pensioners affected are scattered throughout the free world donor-contributing diaspora of Zimbabwe.

The reason I write is to ask you to forcefully & effectively make the case for Zimbabwe pensioners in the House of Commons to tie any future Zimbabwe aid package(s) to a some sort of rectification of the theft of our collective pensions. I and my family have lived here and paid our taxes and dues for twenty years now, since 1988. Obviously any UK aid bundle will be paid for by the electorate and taxpayers of the UK. It must therefore be wholly reasonable that strings are tied to such new aid/gift money at the very least to put right that which has been stolen from our pensioners. To do otherwise is to reward theft and ignore old-age hardship caused by a criminal regime.

I shall be copying and blind copying this email out to a wide and multi-national church of interested folk in my network. It is my hope that you might be prepared to canvass this principle & policy to your parliamentary network also. I am very concerned that in the post-Mugabe era and the aid-fixes being bundled together, that the vulnerable and damaged pensioners are not excluded from the repair processes (it is already too late for many --- simply because they have since died).

I am fully aware that Zimbabwe has monumental issues to deal with - post Mugabe, and that plans and packages will be being hatched even as I write. That is precisely why I write just now; I don't want to see the forgotten pensioners left out of the equation. Please assist me to assist those many destitute Zimbabwe pensioners very much in distressed circumstances. Circumstances that neither you nor I would like to find ourselves nor our nearest and dearest. Thank you.

Sincerely,

John Vincent Austin

Former Head, Harare Customs & Excise

21 Potter Street,  HA6  1QJ  

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