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.

The problem of whether the Black Caps should tour Zimbabwe, pull out of the tour and face penalties or be forbidden from touring by the government has gone away, at least for a year. It seems that NZC and Zimbabwe Cricket have agreed to postpone the tour until next year.

That is hardly a satisfactory solution, but given the significant consequences of the other options, it is welcome.

A bit of editorialising in the Cricinfo article I linked to suggests that by next year Mugabe might be out of power. That idea quite seriously underestimates Mugabe’s ability to survive (who thought he would still be here after his defeat in last year’s election?), but it is true that it would solve the problem as far as cricket is concerned. Zimbabwe won’t be free from Mugabe and his legacy unless and until there is recompense for the victims of Mugabe’s crimes, but that is not an issue for cricket to worry about. (There is still the issue of corruption within Zimbabwe Cricket, but that is an issue for the ICC.)

With an appointment with Zimbabwe looming in the touring schedule, I’ve been following events there in the hope that things are improving in the country so that our tour won’t be the moral minefield it was when we last toured in 2005. The recent formation of a unity government has given me hope, but the subsequent arrest of one of the Movement for Democratic Change ministers on terrorism charges indicate that things aren’t going to change that quickly.

The fact is that while Mugabe is in power, Zimbabwe is no place for us to be visiting. The abuse of human rights will continue and democracy will continue to be trampled upon. We should not tour Zimbabwe in July.

Thankfully then, the government is concerned about the impending tour. There may be a chance that they will step in and ensure the tour will not go ahead.

You will recall that we were last scheduled to tour Zimbabwe in 2005. An unholy stink was raised amongst opponents and supporters of the tour. Mike and I had a minor punch-up over it on Mike on Cricket. I think that neither NZC or the government wanted that tour to go ahead, but cancelling the tour without penalties would require the government to legislate to make touring illegal. Essentially, the solution was for the government to block the players’ passports were they to try to leave the country. This was a step too far for the then Labour-led government, and at the time I had to agree that while it was morally objectionable for us to tour Zimbabwe, it would be a violation of the players’ rights to forbid them to travel. Basically, the ICC had set the bar too high for governments to prevent tours.

Since then however, both England and Australia have prevented tours of Zimbabwe in exactly this way. Also, our current National-led government seems to be prepared to play loose with our rights (at least two bills presented by the government have been deemed inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act by the attorney general). There are calls for the government to ensure the tour does not go ahead.

I still think that banning the players from travelling would be the wrong thing to do, but for the right reason. Some believe it would be possible to legislate against the tour without going to such extremes, so who knows, it may be possible to do it the right thing for the right reason. I note however that recently John Key has been trying to suggest that security and health risks are equally important reasons not to go to Zimbabwe. Both of which strike me as spurious – as far as I can tell the only people threatened by violence in Zimbabwe are those targeted by the government, and the players are in no danger from cholera from their bottled water. It sounds a bit like he is trying to find excuses for the tour to be abandoned without a government order. Which would mean that the tour would be abandoned for the wrong reasons.