Bowling for Zimbabwe

If they were to hand out an Oscar for 'Worst Hell on Earth', Zimbabwe would surely be an unbeatable favourite to take the title. A crippling inflation rate in the billions has ensured every Zimbabwean is a 'Slumdog Millionaire', while a disastrous cholera epidemic has ensured the average life span in Zimbabwe is less than the running time of 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'. Years of political degradation on an unfathomable scale by Robert Mugabe, former hero of Zimbabwe's war for independance, have led to a phantom state where civil society has virtually ceased to exist. Worse, attempts by Zimbabweans to vote Mugabe's ZANU-PF party out of office last year in favour of Morgan Tsangavirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), plunged the country to new horrific depths as ZANU-PF supporters raped and killed supporters of the MDC until Tsangavirai was forced to pull out of a run-off election. (A far better explanation, and comprehensive news updates can be found here. A rather desperate and comprehensive attempt at propaganda can be found here. ) Following on from Paul D's last (and excellent) post on the comparative crappiness of people's lives,its hard for me, a decadent New Zealander whose greatest worry for the day will be trying to remove a large raspberry cordial-induced stain from his favourite (pink) polo shirt, to even imagine the scale of Zimbabwe's suffering, and to be perfectly honest I'm quite pleased to be as far away from Harare as possible. But the Black Caps, New Zealand's cricket team, are due to tour Zimbabwe in August this year. And quite controversially, I think they should.

For a good, logical argument against the tour to Zimbabwe, the NZ Herald wrote a brilliant editorial. (For a bunch of nonsensical rubbish that makes this blog look like The Economist, check here.) But with respect to the Herald, their basic position can be summed up as 'Governments on principle should not interfere with private sporting bodies freedom to decide who, where and when to play BUT in this situation, anything less than a legislative ban on sporting teams playing Zimbabwe would be an endorsement of Mugabe's flouting of democratic principles.' That's wrong on both counts. Of course Government should intervene when a sporting body, or indeed any private body that claims, in its business affairs to represent New Zealand, begins relations with a body that is anathema to all that New Zealand stands for, and to have that relationship associated with brand New Zealand would severly undermine New Zealand's stance on an issue in the world. In the 1980's the Government should have refused to let New Zealand tour South Africa, or South Africa tour New Zealand, on the grounds that the policy of apartheid to was abhorrent to the ideals held by New Zealanders.

But Zimbabwe today is not the South Africa of yesteryear. In apartheid South Africa, coloured peoples were denied selection from sporting teams on the basis of their colour. An All Black test with South Africa, therefore became an implicit endorsement of an apartheid policy - sorta like saying ' We are aware that your selection policies, which stem from policies of your government unfairly discriminate on the basis of race, however we do not care, we shall play sport with you anyway.' (In the 1960's New Zealand was so keen for some racial sporting action that they agreed not to take Maori's over to South Africa with them.). But in Zimbabwe the situation is more akin to a team that just wants to play cricket, while the goverment stampedes over every conception of human rights in that team's wretched, wretched country. Mugabe's government does not ask for Zimbabwean cricket to practice any flagrant violations of human rights and democratic principles, circa South Africa.The people of Zimbabwe do not even support these human rights abuses, as was the case in South Africa where hard-line apartheid government were endorsed by the white minority in election after election. Zimbabweans attempted to vote Mugabe out, and were subjected to a horrific bout of violence and bloodshed. Mugabe retains the Zimbabwean presidency against the will of the Zimbabwean people.

These cricketers are just like any other legitimate business that has been caught up in one of the greatest humanitarian catastrofucks of our time, and shares no culpability for that mess. Zimbabwe is not akin to 1980's South Africa, it is more akin to modern day North Korea, or Fiji - countries that have been subjected to an anti-democratic takeover by despots of varying shades of wankiness. New Zealand has recently hosted international sporting tournaments where both North Korea and Fiji were in attendance, and the goverment stayed silent. Hell, the most consistent cricket team to New Zealand this decade has been the Sri Lankans, and their goverment is faced with mounting criticism over its heavy handed persecution of Tamil civilians in that country's bloody civil war. Furthermore, Zimbabwe has in recent days, made fragile gains toward a return to democracy that would be unfathomable in Kim Jong-Il's Korea. It is too soon to say whether the 'unity' government concocted last week between ZANU-PF and the MDC can bring Zimbabwe back to at least a shadow of her former glory, but signs are encouraging - such as the appointment of Tendai Biti to Minister of Finance, replacing Gideon Gono, a man whose only plan to curb inflation was to 'print more money'. But at the very least, democratic leaders around the world should applaud their efforts to try, not castigate them as pariahs.

The Black Caps should not play in front of Robert Mugabe, and it would be entirely appropriate for the players, and those who control the game in New Zealand, to issue strong criticisms of the ZANU- PF party, and try and attract attention to just how pitiful the life of the ordinary Zimbabwean has become. But to ban, by statutory law, a cricket tour to Zimbabwe would not be consistent with New Zealand's approach to 'sporting tours to countries that suck on the rights front'. Rather it would be a radical departure from principle. Furthermore, it would be a punishment not to Mugabe but to Zimbabwe cricket and the people of Zimbabwe, and would be a slap in the face to those in the Movement for Democratic Change that must constantly walk a tightrope between a ZANU-PF party that is willing to gun down its own citizens to remain in power and an international community that shuns and abhors any suggestion that ZANU-PF may be allowed to remain in power after clearly losing the election.

John Key, New Zealand's Prime Minister, recently stated that he was thinking of banning the tour with regards to 'health reasons', presumably the rampant cholera epidemic put players lives at risk. This was a pathetic fudge from a man who likes to say he can't remember if he was for or against the 1981 Springbok tour (yeah right John - this was a tour that generated such huge protests the army was ordered to fire on protestors if they got too close, and the final rugby test is remembered for Gary Knight, the All Black prop, being knocked to the ground by a bag of flour that had been dropped from a low flying aircraft). It's not about cholera, the Black Caps would not be spending their soujourn to Zimbabwe ekeing out a meager existence in cholera-friendly conditions like the vast majority of Zimbaweans. It's about whether the New Zealand government should be holding Prosper Utesya (Zimbawean captain, and one of the worst players ever to grace the game, check out his awful stats.) as a proxy for the sins of Mugabe. No, they shouldn't.

Alex.