The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
This week Mr Mugabe has done one thing that has been widely reported and two that have not. The widely reported act was his utterly predictable - and predicted - attempt to keep large sections of the British media, especially the BBC, out of Zimbabwe for the tour. The less reported moves came when Mr Mugabe kept the country's parliament sitting late into Tuesday night in order to pass one law that gives the president's allies control of the country's electoral commission and another that effectively emasculates the terms on which international non-governmental organisations can operate in Zimbabwe. All three were classic acts of a repressive state.
Compared with the effects of the two new domestic laws, which will make the already hard lives of ordinary Zimbabweans even harder, the visiting media ban may seem a relatively minor deprivation. But at least it had the effect of compelling the clodpoles who run world cricket to snap out of their dream world. Not even they could justify a tour from which large sections of the press, and the world's most trusted broadcasting organisation, have been arbitrarily banned. Even so, it seems to have taken the players - who have once again been put in an unacceptable position by their employers - to confront the authorities with the moral realities of the situation.