Fraser, Mugabe and the liberals. (Letters).

SIR: May I add a comment to John Roskam's most interesting article "Malcolm Fraser versus History and John Howard" (January-February 2003), particularly regarding the section on "Fraser's Foreign Policy Confusion"?

Malcolm Fraser's work to bring about the installation of Robert Mugabe as dictator of Zimbabwe was certainly regarded by some Liberal Party members as a betrayal. They had in many cases worked extra hard to install a Fraser government because Fraser was not Whitlam, but part of the package of not being Whitlam included unambiguous pro-Western and anticommunist foreign policy. Mugabe was already clearly Moscow's man and a Marxist, and the Patriotic Front, of which he led the biggest faction, was responsible for widespread atrocities. No one with as much intelligence as a bivalve would have taken him for a democrat.

Rhodesia-Zimbabwe at the time already had a black majority government of sorts, under Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had far better pluralistic or democratic credentials, and who, had he been properly supported, might have led Zimbabwe to a far better outcome than has actually been the case. It is nonsense to claim a Muzorewa government would inevitably have failed, though this is plainly a claim that suits the left.

The then existing armed forces, which incidentally had a growing number of black officers, were despite years of blockade highly efficient and had proved their ability to maintain security in ordinary military terms. Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin has claimed, in an article supportive of Fraser, that Fraser "challenged Margaret Thatcher's efforts to stage-manage a moderate political solution", and Fraser's biographer Philip Ayres has written: "The centrality of Fraser's part in the processes ... is indisputable. All the major African figures involved affirm it." Tanzania's president Julius Nyerere considered Fraser's role "crucial in many parts" and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda called it "vital". Apart from the plaudits of these gimcrack dictators, Mugabe himself is quoted by Ayres: "I got enchanted by [Fraser], we became friends, personal friends ... he's really motivated by a liberal philosophy."

Fraser's at least apparent role in the installation of Mugabe caused shock and disillusionment among many rank-and-file Australian Liberals, even if they did not know the close details. It should be remembered that the kind of people who work for a political party--the army of foot soldiers who distribute leaflets at election time, who counter the other side's arguments in pubs, who hand out how-to-vote cards at polling booths, who instead of going to the post-election party stay behind to scrutineer, and who most importantly write cheques--are the kind of people who tend to be interested in, and care about, politics. This is perhaps particularly important in the Liberal Party, which depends on voluntary efforts and does not have the equivalent of the ALP's degree of locked-in union support at this level. For many of them the installation of Mugabe was not a remote incident in a faraway country about which they knew nothing, but an important moral issue. Fraser's support for Mugabe seemed to many to be an early indication of a lack of commitment by Fraser to what might be called the Western alliance and, in ...