Crucket

If you have been checking my schedule page, you’ll see that this month we were supposed to be playing Zimbabwe. That tour has been postponed for a year, so I’ve tentatively pencilled it in for July 2010.

I’m a big believer in cutting sporting ties with wayward countries, certainly when that country is subject to international sanctions. So I’m pleased that we aren’t currently touring Zimbabwe.

However, around about the time the postponement of the tour was decided, the major political parties of Zimbabwe negotiated a power-sharing agreement, the first weakening of the despotic grip that Robert Mugabe held over Zimbabwe. This caused me a slight amount of doubt about whether the sporting boycott was now justified – whether this green shoot of real democracy in Zimbabwe shouldn’t be nurtured. Of course, the power-sharing agreement isn’t of any importance alone; what is important is that it leads to freedom for Zimbabwe.

I wanted to know where Zimbabwe was now, five months after the postponement of the tour was announced. Has the power-sharing agreement helped Zimbabwe? Is the sporting boycott justified? It appears that in many, many important ways, things have not improved in Zimbabwe. While some things have improved with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister (the hyper-inflation is under control), Mugabe is still largely in control of the country and still running it like his personal fiefdom; he controls the army, the police (which continues to arrest Mugabe’s political opponents and human-rights campaigners on trumped-up charges), the courts, the intelligence service and the media (which he uses to attack Tsvangirai). Clearly the boycott is still relevant, and could well still be in a years time when the postponed tour is supposed to go ahead.