April 23, 2008
Did Hague skip geography classes at school?
William Hague, the Tory foreign affairs spokesman, is rightly concerned about the shipment of Chinese arms which is trying to find its way to Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, but his grasp of African geography is less certain.
On Tuesday he issued a press release calling on David Miliband, foreign secretary “to take urgent action with regard to the Chinese ship, currently heading to Uganda carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe”.
Hague’s intervention sent the Foreign Office into a spin, as officials pored over atlases trying to work out how the Chinese vessel might achieve the unlikely task of offloading its weapons in a land-locked country in the heart of Africa.
Perhaps he envisaged the ship heading up to the Mediterranean, taking a right turn down the River Nile and then making the tortuous journey through sub-Saharan Africa to Lake Victoria. Not sure whether the river is up to taking ocean-going ships though.
“What is he talking about?” asked one government official. So far there has been no explanation from Mr Hague’s team about this strange Ugandan affair.
Some of the media are only slightly better…the speculation on where the ship is going is fairly pointless now that the neighbouring countries have said no to the shipment.
Basically because transporting anything through central Africa (especially DRC) is virtually impossible, and Zambia (Zim’s neighbour to the north) is fairly critical to Mugabe so wouldn’t send the arms through anyway.
Posted by: Rob Blackie | April 23rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm | Report this commentZambia is also landlocked as is Malawi. The other mystery was the report that the ship was now headed for Angola. That would also be rather strange as Angola is a very long way off and on the wrong coast. The alternative route is to the port of Beira in Mocambique and thence by rail or road to Zimbabawe through Mutare.
Posted by: Victor, NW Kent | April 23rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm | Report this commentThis reminds me of an immortal Goon Show line from the 50s:
Posted by: David Speedie | April 25th, 2008 at 4:06 pm | Report this comment“I had to swim twenty miles to shore. It was agony–the last ten were overland”