via Cricket | The Zimbabwean 3 september 2014 by Jera
In 2007, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Howard barred his national cricket team from touring Zimbabwe. Howard likened Mugabe to Hitler, saying “The Mugabe regime at present is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents, the living standards of the country are probably the lowest of any in the world and you have an unbelievable rate of inflation. I have no doubt if this tour goes ahead it would be an enormous boost to this grubby dictator.”
Fast forward to 2014, the Australian cricket team visited Zimbabwe for the first time in seven years. The result: Zimbabwe beat Australia for the first time since 1983. Despite Mugabe’s tactless speeches, America, EU and its allies have in recent times showed a softening of stance and appear keen to renew relations.
If Australia’s lifting of the cricket ban is a flickering lighthouse, steering Zimbabwe’s economy from rocky waters, Mugabe, nodding off at the wheel, has failed to notice. – Till next week, my pen is capped. Jerà. Twitter @JeraZW
COMMENTS
That would be John Howard, not Tony Howard.
You were so right Mr Howard – ” grubby dictator ” . Even other African despots in chinafrika privately behind closed doors have labelled him variously inter-alia as ” village idiot. Imbecile. Impotent. Donkey. Buffoon. Baboon. Rogue. Murderer. Criminal. Effeminate latent fairy. Terrorist. Coward. Gay gangsta. Psychologically-disturbed with obvious inferiority complex. Weak handshake like a wet fish. Slimy geriatric. Kleptomaniac. Serpent like eyes. Notoriously bad breath. Grey skin. Untrustworthy. Consumate liar. Craver of attention. Unrepentant racist. “
A/R hits the nail on the head every time! Well said!!
War criminal Tony Howard has the shameless face in calling a survivor of unending interference in Zimbabwe’s affairs since Zimbabwean people decided end the inhumane and illegal occupation of this great country. Let’s see what’s in the store for this war criminal:
The candidates as potential bench warmers for the Hague dock are of course, President George W. Bush, and ex-Prime Ministers Tony Blair (Britain) and John Howard (Australia), an Anglo-centric, some might even say Anglospheric cabal that is now receiving the attention of innovative jurists and enterprising activists.
The latest update in the prosecution machine lies in a brief compiled by activists based in Australia on the subject of charging John Howard with an assortment of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC. This should not come as a surprise to Howard. As early as March 20, 2003, he was put on notice by 41 affiliates of the Victorian Peace Network, acting through the Australian firm Slater and Gordon, that government ministers would, in the event of an invasion of Iraq, be ‘investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted for being complicit in excessive and unjustifiable loss of civilian lives and devastation of non-military infrastructure.’
Howard is more used to regarding the ICC as an acronym of cricket rather than crime. But a legal brief to a body more versed in punishing crimes of politics than code violations of a one-time imperial sport was lodged (June 14) by Melbourne-based activist Tim Anderson and John Valder, former Liberal Party National President. Other members of this eclectic group backing this move are Senator Lyn Allison of the now defunct Australian Democrats, prolific cartoonist Michael Leunig, renowned classical guitarist John Williams and American anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.
The alleged war crimes, noted in the brief to the ICC, centre around ‘the unwarranted and excessively lethal armed attack and invasion of Iraq’ with specific war crimes against specific persons detailed in various annexes to the document. Pictures are appended, and the names of victims attached. John Howard, through his ‘express personal executive decision and action’ is alleged to have perpetrated ‘war crimes by ‘the conduct’ of such an unwarranted, excessive and disproportionate use of force.
Let’s hope this gang of world’s most dispicable war criminals face the music and let them have the taste of their medicine by developing an alternate Guantanamo Prison somewhere in Africa, or better yet in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine!!!
Grubby Dictator is still the correct description regardless of any outcomes of the cricket. I am not so sure that Australia should be proud of associating with a Grubby Dictator in the interests of cricket. It would be more value to more Zimbabweans to get the EU, the AU and the UN to all rule that Mugabe’s innings is over and that he is in fact – OUT.