The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
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Siege mentality insults downtrodden country
By Martin Johnson
(Filed: 24/11/2004)
It was the winter of 1996 when England first went to Zimbabwe for an international cricket series, and nothing much has changed. They couldn't wait to get out of the country then, they can't wait to get out of the place now.
Eight years ago, England, in that selfabsorbed way of modern sportsmen, opted to barricade themselves inside a comfortable hotel when mixing would have enlivened the humdrum existence of a poor but happy people. Now, however, the country has changed from one in which people are simply dying to see them, to one in which people are simply dying.
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When the players, for example, go to lunch at the Queens Club ground in Bulawayo, the menu presumably will be more appetising than the staple diet of the local population, who have been reduced to making soup by boiling tree roots. There is hardly any food in the entire country, but here in Matebeland, as punishment for being the heartland of Robert Mugabe's political opposition, deliberate starvation is actually part of government policy.
In these circumstances, you might say that England were right not to come for a game of cricket during the 2003 World Cup, except that their motives for not doing so were shameful in their self-centred expediency. They ditched the moral argument in favour of safety, which was entirely geared towards hoping to invoke the only clause in the tournament regulations which might have got them two points for not turning up.
It was a country in which they knew perfectly well that the only serious danger of injury was in falling down a pothole in Harare High Street, and given that they were making this 'protest' from South Africa, where having white skin in the wrong part of town guarantees a funeral, it was a far more pathetic performance than anything they managed in 1996.
And that is saying something. It wasn't so much that they were held 0-0 in the two-Test series, and lost 3-0 in the one-day internationals, but that the players were so determined to treat their visit to Africa as a re-staging of the siege of Mafeking that they made as many friends as the number of matches they won.
Upon their subsequent arrival in New Zealand, one senior player remarked that it was "nice to come to a civilised country", a conclusion arrived at after exploring Zimbabwe so thoroughly that his travels took him the length and breadth of his hotel room. The players never went out, they never mixed and were so arrogant in their one-eyed view of the actual cricket that the home captain, Alistair Campbell, described them as having an "insufferable superiority complex".
Zimbabwe in 1996, had England ever taken the trouble to find out, was a country only too pleased to dip into what few resources they had to extend their hospitality to overseas visitors, and it was the English media who benefited most by taking up all the invitations that the cricket team declined.
There were some memorable days at the local golf clubs, where the only hint of violence came from the avalanche of black caddies fighting to carry your bag, and the local custom was never to tee off – even at 8 am – without having first knocked back several glasses of gin and tonic.
The locals were, and still are, inordinately friendly to whites, and you'd go with them to a back street money-changer without ever wondering whether you were going to be ripped off or robbed. The black market was the only way to change your money, a conclusion not hard to come to when passing a shop where a plastic bathtub was on display for the equivalent, at official rates, of £17,000. Not the kind of price tag you'd expect to see down at B & Q.
So downtrodden are the people that England playing cricket there no longer provides a welcome diversion from the privations of everyday life. They're too busy trying to stay alive. England's cricketers keep saying that they can't wait to leave, which presumably is supposed to make us feel sorry for them. But when they do leave, they should bear one thing in mind. They're lucky that they can leave.
'They'll play the great game as people
starve'
By Simon Briggs
(Filed: 24/11/2004)
The great Zimbabwean dilemma is still dividing opinion, even among those who know it best. Andy Flower and Henry Olonga were united in protest last year, when their black armbands provided the most resonant image of the 2003 World Cup. But now, just 18 months on, they have opposing views on the issue of England's tour.
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Flower, who was consulted by several England players, including Darren Gough, has opted to place his considerable influence behind the tour. As he told the Yorkshire Post last week, he feels England's visit will bring much-needed attention to the atrocities of President Robert Mugabe. "It will keep the plight of the Zimbabwean people firmly in the news at a time when events in the Middle East have taken centre stage," he said.
Olonga, in contrast, takes the view that Zimbabwe should be treated like apartheid-era South Africa. While sympathetic to Flower's perspective, he is concerned that any resumption of normal service might suggest that "everything is hunky-dory".
As he said yesterday: "It's a very difficult question, and we've been discussing it for two years without consensus. But overall, I err in the direction of sporting boycotts."
Olonga lives in London now and, while he still turns his arm over for Lashings, the celebrity pub team, he has a new life built around his singing talents. His father, though, is still based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, where food shortages are a constant worry. Insiders say that many of Mugabe's opponents have been silenced by the simple expedient of squeezing their food supply.
"When you look at the bigger picture," Olonga said, "what is happening on the ground is more of a priority than the great game that I love. When people are starving, unemployment is running at 70 per cent and the Zimbabwean government is buying arms from China rather than looking after its own, those are the kind of things that get me going.
"I'd say the better of the options is for countries not to tour Zimbabwe, because we saw the benefit of what sporting boycotts can do with South Africa in the Eighties and Nineties. But the International Cricket Council have gone the other way, and England seem to be the ones who keep copping their wrath."
Before he put his conscience ahead of his cricket career, Olonga was a famously unpredictable pace bowler. One minute he would be taking three wickets in an over, the next he would be going around the park. One thing he did have, though, was a natural performer's sense of enjoyment, something we can expect to be conspicuously lacking from England's five one-day games.
Given that sport is meant to be about entertainment, for players as much as spectators, it seems extraordinary that Michael Vaughan's England should be forced to press ahead with this benighted tour, which the senior figures admit they are dreading. Some series are one-sided and some are simply joyless, but this series is shaping up as the worst of all tours.
A closer contest might have been arranged if the overlords of Zimbabwe cricket had deigned to strike a deal with Heath Streak and his comrades, or at least the small minority who have not already fled overseas. But here, too, the ICC are guilty of double-speak. First they threatened to annul Zimbabwe's Test status, then they claimed it had never been in danger. As Olonga said, the player dispute was "a headache they just wanted to go away".
"The players had the chance to bring forth evidence," Olonga added, "but when they were too intimidated to testify, the ICC were quick to draw the conclusion that there was no racism in Zimbabwe cricket. I disagree and so do a lot of other people."
No one denies that Zimbabwean sport and society are in a sorry state. But will England's tour be a force for good or ill? For all the sound and fury, the sad truth is that it is unlikely to make much of an impact. The next 24 hours should tell us more.
A country gripped by fear
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare
(Filed:
24/11/2004)
If England arrive at 7 o'clock tonight at Harare International Airport they will be stepping into a gloomy, fearful Zimbabwe where most people neither know nor care that they are here. The buzz and cheer that preceded their arrival on earlier tours is missing.
Few cricket fans are going to turn up to watch the one-day games in Harare and Bulawayo. Protesters have either left Zimbabwe or cannot afford the bus ride to the grounds. Most of those still in the country live in the poverty of the ghettos and will be doing what 90 per cent of Zimbabweans do every day – scavenging to find enough food for their families.
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At Harare Sports Club a grim task for England will begin on Friday. Against their will, but fulfilling International Cricket Council orders, they will face a young Zimbabwe side. Zimbabwe captain Tatenda Taibu, 21, not only has talent and determination but also the top job in the only solvent sport in the country. He and his colleagues must perform to protect Zimbabwe's Test status ahead of India's tour next year when money from television rights will flood the game with foreign currency. Professional cricket is rich pickings in Zimbabwe, even now, when the game is at its lowest ebb in 50 years.
Harare Sports Club is across the road from the back entrance to President Robert Mugabe's official residence. Locals know not to walk outside the club. Mugabe's guards, pacing up and down clutching automatic weapons, are bad tempered. They arrested a woman last week saying that she failed to stop her car in time as Mugabe's motorcade sped towards his residence. A soldier drew blood when he slapped her in front of her weeping children and she was taken to a police station where her husband had to pay a small fine.
Roads near the ground and hotels for visiting journalists and cricketers will be overrun by members of the Central Intelligence Organisation and uniformed policemen. Locals can spot them a mile off, lounging on sofas, loitering at reception and watching entrances to the club and hotel lobbies.
There will be roadblocks around the city on Friday morning looking for any potential protester, perhaps wearing an old T-shirt from the World Cup last year. Even then, with deepening repression and political demonstrations banned, there was excitement when the games started. A few dozen people had bought tickets and were enthralled when the new heroes, Zimbabwe cricketers Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, wore black to grieve the "death of democracy". Scores were arrested, some were beaten.
Harare is clean by African standards, its rush hour traffic and pedestrians are orderly, but as the city empties after 5pm, thousands queue quietly for hours to take dilapidated commuter buses to the townships far from the best hotels and the cricket ground.
"I'll see a couple of friends in the English team and some from the Zimbabwe side after the game in Bulawayo, but I don't feel like going to watch," said former captain Heath Streak yesterday, still sad that his Zimbabwe career ended last April when he was sacked.
Former Zimbabwe captain Alistair Campbell arranged a cricket training session for disadvantaged children to coincide with England's arrival to raise money for the rural school where he teaches. The school, about 35 miles north of Harare, has been seized by the government for "resettlement" but it still functions, watched over by Mugabe's supporters who call themselves "war veterans".
The government-controlled Sunday Mail speculated that the 30 foreign journalists seeking permission to cover the tour had more than cricket on their agenda. It wrote: "This training session has been kept a closely guarded secret, a situation that has raised eyebrows amid reports that this may be a ploy to provoke war veterans around that farming area so that whatever will happen will be used as the basis for writing negative stories on Zimbabwe."