Another silent witness to the great Matabeleland massacres

Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA)

Witness to a massacre

Sir Martin Ewans ... respected diplomat

Sir Martin Ewans, British diplomat, born 14 November 1928 died 15 April 2012, aged 83

By Trevor Grundy

April 25, 2012

Sir Martin Ewans, one of Britain’s best known and most highly respected diplomats, has died at the age of 83. Between joining the Commonwealth Office in 1952 and his retirement almost four decades later, he served in eight posts, seven of them in Commonwealth countries.

Many African experts say he was one of Britain’s most outstanding representatives.

When he left the diplomatic arena, he went on to write a series of distinguished books about African and Asian issues.

Martin Kenneth Ewans was born in 1928, educated at St Paul’s School in London and later at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University.

After serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery during his national service, he  joined the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1952 and  served first in Pakistan and then in Canada, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Tanzania.

In 1973 he was appointed head of the East African Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he served for four years before his appointment as Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi.

These were tumultuous times in India where the still young Ewans cut his teeth as a diplomat forced to gather information about massacres in a country which was not only friendly to Britain but one essential to Britain’s economic interests.

After India, he worked for three years as a senior civilian instructor at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London.

Two further missions followed and from 1983 to 1985 he was High Commissioner in Harare and then, from 1986 to 1988, High Commissioner in Nigeria.

He had some of his toughest, and most personally painful experiences in Robert Mugabe’s three-year-old Zimbabwe, experiences which, former colleagues of his say, disturbed him for the rest of his life.

Regarded at the time by most Commonwealth leaders as a moderate man bent only on national development after seven years of war, President Mugabe had launched an ethnic and political cleansing campaign in Matabeleland called by local people Gukuruhundi.

High Commissioner Ewans and his staff were well informed about the atrocities taking place on a horrendous scale.

Years later, during a TV programme called The Price of Silence (transmitted by BBC 1 on 19 March 2002), the well-respected reporter Fergal Keane asked Sir Martin if he had protested to President Mugabe about what was going on.

“I think,“ Sir Martin replied, ”to have protested to Mugabe, or to have gone on record as not liking what was going on down there, would not have been helpful. Mugabe would have resented it very acutely. I think it might have been even counter-productive, it might have damaged the policies we were trying to follow of helping Zimbabwe to build up as a nation.”

Keane then asked the former diplomat if he personally regretted not protesting to Mugabe (reports say as many as 25,000 men, women and children were massacred between 1983-1987).

Sir Martin replied: “No, I think this business has really been rather blown up.  It wasn’t pleasant and people were being killed but as I said, I don’t think anything was to be gained by protesting to Mugabe about it.”

After his retirement, Sir Martin became a prolific author and in 2002 brought out an account of King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo

He completed a book on his experiences in Zimbabwe between 1983 -1985 but it has yet to be published.

What Sir Martin  had to say (if anything at all) about the pressure brought on him not to antagonise Mugabe so soon after the birth of Zimbabwe in 1980 would be of great  interest to historians and journalists who remain  hungry for first-hand accounts of what went on behind the scenes during Gukuruhundi.

In the course of his long retirement, Sir Martin acted as Vice-President of the British-Nigeria Association. He was also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and at the age of 83 enrolled for a postgraduate degree in philosophy.

In 1953 he married Mary (nee Tooke) and she and their son and daughter survive him.