The Zimbabwe Situation

Last month at the Cricket World Cup, two Zimbabwean players took to the
field wearing black armbands to signal the death of their country's
democracy. What happened next? Basildon Peta reports on the fate of the men
who dared to challenge Mugabe
26 March 2003

On a sunny morning in early February, two cricketers, smartly dressed in the
Zimbabwe team colours of red, green and black, strolled on to the lush green
pitch of Harare's main cricket ground. Along with the rest of the Zimbabwe
team, they were there to play against Namibia in their country's opening
match of the cricket World Cup. They may have hoped for an enthusiastic
welcome from the rather thin crowd in the stands, but the fans stayed
unusually quiet. The reason? Henry Olonga and his team-mate Andy Flower had
made an unscheduled addition to their kit: they were wearing black armbands.
And in a joint pre-match statement, the two players - one black, one white -
explained their actions thus: "We are mourning the death of democracy in our
beloved Zimbabwe... We pray that our small action may help to restore sanity
and dignity to our nation."

A small action, indeed; certainly, if judged by the standards of even the
most elementary democracy. Yet it has cost the two men dearly. Their
comparatively opulent lifestyles in the beleaguered southern-African nation
are no more. The two cricketers have joined the estimated three million of
their countrymen who have fled Robert Mugabe's reign of terror to live as
economic and political refugees in foreign countries. Both have retired from
the international game; Olonga is in hiding in South Africa, and Flower and
his family are preparing to start a new life in England. (Flower will be
joining the Essex team this summer.) Both know what awaits them if they go
back home - charges of treason, an offence punishable by death.

Zimbabwe House, President Mugabe's official residence in Harare, is just
opposite the capital city's cricket ground. Stroll around these two
buildings and you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a country at
war with a superpower. They are surrounded by heavily fortified security
cordons and armed soldiers carrying automatic rifles and machine guns.
Hi-tech security cameras, allegedly installed with the help of Israeli
intelligence, are dotted around the towering concrete wall around Mugabe's
hideaway. But they are not just there to enable his security men to track
movements in the immediate vicinity. Just as important, they allow them to
monitor everything that goes on at the cricket ground, on the western side
of the President's residence.

The reason for their interest is obvious. The ground is the long-standing
home of the Harare Sports Club, a popular venue for whites that has often
been accused of providing a focus for plots to overthrow Mugabe's
government. Protesters against Mugabe's increasingly authoritarian regime
generally avoid straying into this high-security area, as his trigger-happy
soldiers have, over the years, shot and killed dozens of motorists for
violating curfews around the stadium and Zimbabwe House. So it must have
taken extraordinary courage for Olonga and Flower to make their historic
protest right under the noses of Mugabe's security men.

If truth be told, they might have hoped for a better reception. They got a
muted response from the sparse crowd of spectators, mostly schoolchildren,
partly because of the Zimbabwean government's threat to quell any protests
ruthlessly, and partly because it was not a big match anyway - Namibia are
novices in world cricket. Away from the ground, Zimbabweans generally
applauded the two cricketers, although the state media launched a scathing
attack on Olonga as a "lackey of the whites". In the international press,
their actions were noted and widely praised; even the odd interview with
Olonga was printed. But that's as far as it went.

Meanwhile, Mugabe, the ageing Zimbabwean leader, who has ruled with impunity
since independence from Britain in 1980, was continuing with his war on his
own people - both black and white. Oppose his rule and you immediately walk
into his line of fire. So it was no surprise that, after the Namibia match,
Zimbabwe's selectors tried to drop Flower - the team's only world-class
player - from their game against Australia. Only the threat of a players'
revolt kept him his place. Olonga, on the other hand, was relegated to 12th
man for all Zimbabwe's later games, including what was to be his last match,
against Sri Lanka in the Super Sixes. By then, he knew he was in trouble.

On the day of the Sri Lanka match, reports were rife that President Mugabe's
much-feared secret police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO),
would be in the stands as spectators. Olonga feared that their real mission
was to escort him back home to face charges of treason. "I suppose I shall
never know why the CIO men were there or what they planned, but I was taking
no chances, with so many people being arrested on trumped-up treason charges
back home," he said afterwards. Before the match - which was played in East
London, South Africa - had finished, he had packed his bags, handed over a
resignation statement to the media and gone into hiding. At the young age of
26, Olonga's promising international cricket career - as an energetic fast
bowler and the first black cricketer to represent Zimbabwe in a Test match -
was over.

It is now clear that Olonga was right in his decision not to go back home.
When I interviewed intelligence officials in Zimbabwe last weekend, they
confirmed Olonga's fears that his safety would not have been guaranteed had
he returned to Harare. By staging his protest at a sporting event so close
to Mugabe's residence, Olonga was liable, according to the officials, under
Zimbabwe's vaguely formulated security laws, which criminalise anything the
President does not like. "His behaviour was criminal," said one intelligence
official. "What does one gain from selling out and lying about his country?
He tried to besmirch the President's name... and so he is liable under
Posa."

Posa is the acronym for Zimbabwe's new draconian Public Order and Security
Act, which allows 20-year jail sentences and even the death penalty to be
imposed on anyone accused of tarnishing Mugabe's name or engaging in
treasonable acts. How Olonga's and Flower's protest violated that law could
never be clear to anyone outside Mugabe's partisan police force and muzzled
judiciary. Yet the officials I spoke to said they focused more on Olonga
because he was "a black man who had publicly betrayed his fellow black
people" and had publicly "conspired" in white-led machinations to overthrow
President Mugabe. They said, too, that there was nothing to stop them
arresting Olonga during his final match in South Africa and asking him to
explain his actions. They held back only because they "did not want to be
misunderstood".

A more likely reason for their restraint is that the Zimbabwean authorities
had given a multitude of assurances to the International Cricket Council
(ICC) regarding the security of players. With five more of the Super Six
matches to be played, the ICC might well have decided to cancel games if
there had been any public show of strong-arm tactics against players. So, it
seems a strategic decision was made to wait until after the World Cup. But
the Zimbabwean authorities mistimed it badly, and Olonga escaped.

Dr John Olonga, Henry's 67-year-old father and a consultant with a respected
practice in Bulawayo, south-west Zimbabwe, says he got wind of a plot to
arrest his son on his return from South Africa. He implored him never to
return. "I could not sacrifice my son by letting him come back to Zimbabwe,"
he says, insisting that the authorities wanted his son to pay a "heavy
price" for his courage in telling the truth about the "state of chaos" in
Zimbabwe. "What my son has said about human-rights abuses in Zimbabwe is
known to everyone here, but most people are afraid to speak because of this
authoritarian government," Dr Olonga says. "As a father, I had to act. I
told him to stay away, because we could not ignore the warnings I was
getting from sympathetic people in high places, people who knew he was in
danger."

Dr Olonga says he has lived and worked in various African countries but is
outraged by what Zimbabwe is experiencing. "I am horrified by the situation
here. I could never have imagined things would get this bad," he says.
Although the departure of his son has, naturally, disrupted his family of
five, he says he can feel only glad that he is out of danger. "I was haunted
by thoughts of his safety while he was still here, but I now feel relived."
While Henry has hinted that he hopes to seek asylum in England, his father
insists that his son has not made a final decision on his destination: he
will end up "wherever he feels safe", possibly even with his mother, who is
based in Australia.

Sadly, as long as he remains in South Africa, Olonga is, in all probability,
not entirely safe. "South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC)
party and Zimbabwe's Zanu PF party are bedfellows," he has said, adding that
he foresees the possibility of the two parties colluding to harm him. As a
result, he is remaining deep in hiding - even his father does not know where
he is staying - while attempting to negotiate his way out of South Africa.
He is unlikely to receive much help from the authorities. An ANC spokesman,
Smut Ngonyama, did not mince his words when I spoke to him, describing
Olonga as "ill-informed and delusional". "While he may be an accomplished
cricketer, Olonga clearly knows nothing about the constitutional and
political environment in South Africa, nor about the nature of international
inter-party relations," Ngonyama says. "His suggestion that his life could
be in danger in South Africa is insulting."

But Dr Olonga and his friends in Zimbabwe, who are baffled by the South
African government's continued open support for Mugabe while he eliminates
opponents at home, believe that Henry's fears are not entirely unfounded.
"The key is for him to get to where he feels completely safe," his father
says.

So what now for Henry Olonga? Though abandoned by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union
and dropped by his cricket team, he claims to have no regrets. "The stand I
took in the World Cup has undoubtedly had repercussions that have affected
both my career and my personal life," he said in the statement that
announced his retirement. "If I were to continue to play for Zimbabwe in the
midst of the prevailing crisis, I would do so only by neglecting the voice
of my conscience. I would be condoning the human-rights violations that have
been perpetrated - and continue to be perpetrated - against my countrymen."

Dr Olonga attests to his son's integrity. "They may threaten him and scare
him off, but there is one thing they won't take away from him: his
conscience and pride," he says. An old school friend of Henry's, who
declines to be named, for fear of reprisals, agrees, describing him as a man
of conviction. "He can sacrifice anything for his convictions... When he
thinks he is right about something, you can't turn him from that path. He
didn't protest that Mugabe's regime is evil because everybody else said so.
He did it because that's what his heart and conscience told him. If there
are principled people in this world, then Henry is definitely one of them."

Lovemore Madhuku, a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe and the
chairman of Zimbabwe's civic group, the National Constitutional Assembly,
says he has become a great admirer of Olonga since the armband protest. "At
his tender age, he has done what most people are afraid to do in this
country," says Madhuku. "He has done what his country needs. If other
high-profile sportsmen in this country would use their stature to highlight
the abuses in this country, perhaps we could attract more world attention.
We might not have sunk to this disgraceful state of squalor. But many
amongst us are cowards."

Madhuku hopes that Olonga's plight will help to keep the abuses in Zimbabwe
in the spotlight when the world is focused on Iraq. He says he cannot
understand why world leaders are not convinced that the Zimbabweans
repressed by Mugabe's regime do not deserve the same attention as the Iraqis
repressed by Saddam Hussein. "Instead of helping fleeing Zimbabweans, some
countries - including Britain - turn a blind eye. That can only make them
more fearful of engaging Mugabe at home, because they have nowhere to run,"
he says.

It's hard not to agree that the UK - where Olonga's stepmother lives -
should play its part by granting him asylum. What he would do once here is
tricky. The county cricket clubs have already filled their quotas of two
overseas players each - or have made the financial decision not to do so.
And even if he were granted British citizenship, his prior membership of the
Zimbabwe international team would mean he couldn't turn out as a domestic
player for 12 months. He could, perhaps, end up singing for his supper
instead. For, as well as being a talented cricketer, Olonga has had a second
career, in music - he has had a No 1 single in Zimbabwe. And it has been
claimed that Barrington Pheloung, the composer of the Inspector Morse theme
tune and a keen cricket fan, even offered Olonga a recording contract a
couple of years ago.

Olonga does not rule out returning to play cricket for his country one day.
"If there was a change of regime that made my return without fear of
prosecution feasible, I would come out of retirement tomorrow to play again
for the Zimbabwe I love," he has said. Yet until he finds somewhere safe to
live, that is out of the question. "I have to consider the worst-case
scenario," he says. "I cannot take chances with my security. That is why I
am in hiding, keeping a low profile. Which means locking the door and
staying off the streets."


	Sexually assaulted: Patricia Mukonda in hospital yesterday