Tinaro Herald
South Canterbury
Monday, 23 February 2009
IT’S a vexed question that has cropped up before, but this time an added variable is thrown in.
Should the Black Caps, our national cricket team, tour Zimbabwe, ravaged by cholera, AIDS, unemployment, rampant inflation and other ills that started on the watch of internationally vilified president Robert Mugabe?
It’s an issue that certainly polarised opinion in New Zealand in 2005, when late Green Party co-leader Rod Donald campaigned strongly against the team going, even bringing out former Zimbabwean test player Henry Olonga, who had fled the country after a protest against Mugabe’s regime, to push the cause.
In a World Cup match a couple of years earlier, Olonga and teammate Andy Flower now coaching the England side in a caretaker capacity in the West Indies had worn black armbands to protest the “death of democracy” in their homeland.
Then, as now, taking the decision not to tour off its own bat, so to speak, was too big a call for New Zealand Cricket to make. The game’s seemingly-blind-to-politics global controlling body, the International Cricket Council, imposes big fines for countries choosing not to undertake scheduled tours because of the obvious losses in revenue incurred by the host country.
Despite the obvious abhorrence of many New Zealanders for the Mugabe regime, NZC couldn’t be expected to make the call in 2005. The only way out of the tour without a huge financial loss would have been for the New Zealand government to say the team couldn’t go. NZC would have been spared the fines if the Government had made the call, but both Labour and National at the time opposed a bill introduced by Mr Donald to halt the tour, which went ahead.
Now, with the Black Caps set to play three matches there in July, Prime Minister John Key has indicated his willingness to order the team not to go, taking away from NZC boss Justin Vaughan a decision that could only go one way anyway if left to him.
Despite the traditional unwillingness of New Zealand governments to intervene in such a manner in matters sporting, few Kiwis would shed any tears at the cancellation of the trip. But this time round there is the strange situation of Zimbabwe having undergone a change of government of sorts, with a coalition agreement signed between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Sports Minister David Coltart, an MDC member, has said New Zealand is obliged to tour, to give the new government a chance, and may have a point. But there’s a widely held view the coalition agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s a tough question and one Mr Key and his Government will have to get their heads around quickly. Good luck to them.