VIRGIN Group boss Richard Branson had plans to bankroll a diplomatic move aimed at persuading President Robert Mugabe to step down, according to a cable published by WikiLeaks.

The July 11, 2007, diplomatic cable, classified by the US ambassador to South Africa Eric Bost, said Zimbabwe’s former Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was "working with Branson on the plan" after “reaching out” to the tycoon.

The initiative never came to fruition, although its proposal of a "broad-based government of all national talents and interests" bears similarities to the country's current power-sharing agreement.

Moyo told New Zimbabwe.com on Wednesday that claims that he brokered the plan were “completely false”. In a lengthy telephone interview, he went on to explain how he came to be involved with Branson and his ‘Elders’ initiative. Here are extracts of that interview:

“I have read this cable which is based on third party comments and not on anything that I said to anyone. It turns out that it is based on information provided by an American informant Sydney Masamvu.

Having read the cable, and a news report in The Daily News on Sunday based on it, I have made a few observations. The Daily News report, for instance, contains patently false reports that US$10 million was dangled for President Mugabe to give up power.

It has become typical of The Daily News to rewrite cables and report them in its fanciful imagination. The paper cannot be trusted to report what is on the record. It has now become a pattern that they patently lie.

What is in the cable is that the said initiative was being bankrolled by Branson, through his Foundation, and that’s what the cable says. The initiative was not about money or offering money. The only thing to be offered to the president was “watertight” guarantees for immunity.

I have two concerns. One is the continuing blatant falsehoods by The Daily News showing that it clearly beyond any reasonable doubt has an agenda. All that is needed is for one to read their report and then read the cable, the difference is like night and day.

Secondly, I am seriously concerned that Sydney Masamvu, whose identity the cable says must be 'strictly protected', and has been accordingly obligingly redacted by UK newspapers... I’m alarmed to learn that he passed my email exchanges with Branson to US diplomats. This suggests that they were hacking my email.

The fact is that there is a clear allegation in the cable that my email correspondence was forwarded by this person, and it worries me a lot. This leaves me with real, present and serious worry that there were breaches of my correspondence. I wonder, was it through hacking? Was it the Americans? Was it some other authority that was working with this person [Masamvu] who has been previously exposed to be a double agent of the South Africans and the Americans?

The comments by the unnamed spokesperson for Richard Branson issued to British newspapers on Tuesday that I approached him on this initiative is completely false, and I have no doubt Branson can’t confirm that because he knows better.

What happened is that sometime in April 2007, while in a passport control queue at Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, I turned round and directly behind me was Richard Branson. I instantly recognised him, and I said ‘hello, you are Richard right?’, and he said ‘yes, who are you?' I told him I was ‘Jonathan Moyo’, and he said ‘from where?’ I replied ‘from Zimbabwe’ to which he asked me, ‘what do you do?’ and I replied ‘I’m an independent Member of Parliament’.

When I mentioned that I was an MP, he said ‘how interesting it is that I meet you when I have just been here in South Africa talking about your country and meeting with people.’ He then explained that he was working with Peter Gabriel [former rock star] on an initiative to set up a panel of ‘elders’ who would intervene in conflict situations internationally on matters of peace and reconciliation. He explained that at the meeting he had attended, their immediate focus, they had decided, would be Sudan and Zimbabwe.

I told him that what he was explaining was interesting. He told me ‘we really think we can help in your situation’. As we were chatting, the queue was moving and we soon cleared passport control. He then asked me what time my flight was -- I was on a 1930hrs South African Airways flight to Harare and had slightly more than two hours before boarding. He told me he was going back to the UK and asked if I had time to talk in the Virgin Lounge.

We sat down and talked. He elaborated on the discussions they had just had and he said his Virgin Foundation was going to do this. The concept was developed by him and Peter Gabriel, he explained, as a global concept but whose immediate focus would be Zimbabwe and Sudan.

He said the other people involved were Nelson Mandela as patron of the initiative which they would be launching in Johannesburg in July [of 2007]. He told me Mandela had accepted. He informed me the other ‘elders’ were Mary Robinson, who was retiring from the UN Human Rights Commission; former President Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Graca Machel, Koffi Annan and some other person from Asia I can’t immediately remember.

He further informed me that this is the panel which would coordinate the Zimbabwe engagement with Annan leading the initiative. That’s him telling me at the airport, upon bumping into each other, no prior communication. He didn’t have much background about me other than that I was an MP.

And then he asked me what I thought about his plan. I told him that certainly the situation was very difficult in Zimbabwe because already by that time, around March that year, SADC had begun a process of mediation. I told Branson I cannot imagine that the Zimbabwean authorities or SADC leaders would accept any other mediation which competes or contradicts, and that if there is any effort it would have to support the mediation and the cable bears that out.

Then I said I don’t see any possibility under the sun of a so-called panel of elders composed of names given me having the slightest chance of being received in Harare, let alone being listened to. That got him interested, scared and worried.

I said Mary Robinson has been giving us hell at the UN and being biased; Tutu has been insulting our president and there is no way the president would welcome someone like that because his views were unacceptable. The same with Graca Machel who used to have some standing as First Lady of Mozambique but has become a confused figure as a former First Lady of South Africa [she is Mandela’s wife].

I said former President Carter is associated with the National Democratic Institute, and his Carter Centre was represented on the election observation team that was in Zimbabwe in 2000 which reached very biased conclusions. I said while he may be useful in Latin America and the Middle East where he has shown some objectivity, he would not work in Zimbabwe, although the jury was out on how he would do in a different team.

I dismissed Mandela as well and told Branson that in my humble opinion, his Elders team as it was at that time composed would not have a chance in hell of being entertained by President Mugabe.

Then he said okay, it was quite fortuitous that just as he was coming from the meeting he had run into me as a person who is from Zimbabwe and is an MP. He asked me: ‘what would you suggest?’ Then I said: ‘I would have to think and give you some considered suggestions.’ Then he said ‘great’, and asked ‘how soon?’ and I told him ‘maybe a week’. We then swapped numbers and e-mail addresses.

Two days after I got to Harare, he called me and later sent an email saying he had been pleased to meet me, he had been jolted by my comments on his panel and grateful that I had been candid about what I saw as its shortcomings. He explained that he had shared details of his conversations with me with Annan, and Annan was keen to receive my considered suggestions as the lead person on the initiative.

So after receiving his email, I contacted Gideon Gono [Reserve Bank Governor and Mugabe confidante], whom I was in regular touch with at that time. I told him of my conversations with Branson, and his email he had just sent me on his proposed panel with a request to be put in touch with somebody senior who was involved.

Gono was very excited to hear about both issues and told me that in fact he had read a lot of books by this guy and that I could give Branson his contacts, and that Branson was free to talk to him to pursue these matters.

I told Gono that I had challenged the composition of Branson’s panel. I said that with the exception of Annan, the rest were unacceptable; that the only way the panel could offer opportunity was if it had Pan-Africanist leaders with strong grounding. I suggested former heads of state who respect President Mugabe, and whom President Mugabe would respect.

I indicated that Mandela would be a problem, and the former leaders available were Sam Nujoma, Kenneth Kaunda, Joaquim Chissano, Daniel Arap Moi, Ketumile Masire, Jerry Rawlings and Annan. I said a panel of those would have a better chance of getting an audience and putting across their view.

I checked with Gono if he thought these five would have a chance, and he said 'yes'. Subsequently, Branson and Gono were in constant touch. I am not privy to what they discussed, except that Gono was the main man in 2007 in Zimbabwe. They [Branson and Annan] then invited Gono to be one of keynote speakers at the launch of the Elders panel in July. He had confirmed and only pulled out two days before the event.

After Branson got my response suggesting the new names, he said I needed to elaborate and develop a paper for presentation at the launch. I prepared a paper, and when I went for the launch, the advisers – two American professors, South Africans and a British national, most of them associated with Mandela’s Foundation -- when they received my paper they argued against it, and rejected it and went with their own panel.

They said I was a Mugabe loyalist trying to smuggle things into their agenda, that my views would not be acceptable to the MDC and civil society. They said people like Nujoma would do the bidding for Mugabe. They said the suggested panel was a ‘Mugabe club’ and it would not work.

None of the former leaders I suggested were contacted. The only one who got to fully to know about the proposal was Annan. Masire might have as well because his daughter was a coordinator of the Virgin Foundation in Africa. So, in the end, that panel which I suggested and which is in the cable did not even convene because it was rejected as pro-Mugabe.

When I got there for the launch, I found myself surrounded by Mandela Foundation people. My paper had been circulated to all of them beforehand, Branson came to meeting with Carter and Annan and their team of advisers. They asked me to present this paper at that preliminary meeting to see if it was appropriate for actual presentation during the first Elders meeting. The only people interested in listening were Branson and Annan, and I would say a bit of Carter. That was my second and last time to meet Branson.

I am aware that Gono continued his conversations with Annan and even went to meet him in Switzerland, I understand with government approval, to work on a new initiative after the Elders thing fell flat. This initiative, I understand, was supposed to support agriculture and economic revival through Annan’s Foundation as an entry point to help the political process.

That was the end. Those are the facts. It is not true that it was a secret thing, the Elders initiative was a very public affair launched at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg. If you Google ‘Elders launch’ you will find it. There was nothing covert about it.

They didn’t follow up on their plan of action I suppose because a strong paper had been written pointing to their unsuitability to lead such a process. In fact they didn’t do anything until the following year when they tried to come to Zimbabwe and they were declined.

Sure, many of us might want to sit today enjoying some semblance of stability and forget where we have come from. The situation in our country from March 2007-September 2008 was a classical dire straits, and any Zimbabwean who calls himself a national leader who was not seized with that situation or moved by it to find a solution that did not compromise our national interest and sovereignty is either a liar or deadwood.

I for one make no apology for being involved with other compatriots to meaningfully find a solution that honestly addressed our circumstances without compromising our sovereignty and national interest. No apology for that.

It’s disgraceful that we have some paid media miscreants who shamelessly don’t understand this and are doing everything possible to inject their foolish imagination to things that are otherwise serious and require sober analysis.

The possibility of that period [March 2007-September 2008] repeating itself is very high, and there is no need therefore for us to pretend that we will not learn from this recent history and act in a mature and responsible way.”