The Zimbabwean
| Written by Leonard Ncube
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Sunday, 20 June 2010
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| Province needs 1400 teachers
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Critical teacher shortage hits Matabeleland North
The man pushing for change in Zimbabwe
June 19, 2010
By Malcolm Conn
David Coltart is the acceptable face of Zimbabwe cricket.
A human rights lawyer and now Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister in Zimbabwe’s fragile inclusive government, Coltart shares a cabinet room with the man who once apparently ordered his assassination, brutal dictator Robert Mugabe.
Attempting to rebuild a shattered country many feared would become another Somalia, the least bloody choice for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in 2008 was to try to work with those who shattered it, and Coltart is using cricket as a vehicle for reconciliation.
He was in New Zealand and Australia this past week thawing relations with both governments and pleading with cricket officials to resume tours. So well was Coltart accepted, tours involving Australia A are expected to begin within a year.
“The decision the combined MDC made was to avoid the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives we would reach this agreement, brokered by the region, which involved us swallowing hard and entering into an agreement with a political party which had been responsible for hundreds of activists’ deaths and gross acts of corruption.
“I’ve had to approach my job as minister in the same way because I firmly believe this is the only viable non-violent option open to us as a country.
“The price is that people like Robert Mugabe are still in office, and the same applies to cricket, but one cannot live in the past. One has to move on.”
Cricket is often regarded as a microcosm of its country and this is no different in Zimbabwe, where the internationally disgraced hierarchy of Zimbabwe Cricket destroyed the game at all levels simply to stay in power.
Like the elite enjoying Mugabe’s patronage, they wanted to keep their snouts in the trough as television broadcasters and the International Cricket Council continued to pour millions into the pathetic rump that became Zimbabwe cricket.
“Zimbabwe cricket has been through a terrible 10 years and almost died but I think we are seeing its resurgence,” Coltart said.
“There are still obviously many problems within cricket and one has to see this as a process of transformation which is going to take some years, not just in terms of performances on the field but the way we run our cricket.”
So close is ZC president Peter Chingoka considered to be to the Mugabe regime, he is one of the few dozen Zimbabweans banned from visiting the EU, UK and Australia, forcing the ICC to move this month’s annual meeting from London to Singapore.
“Just as Robert Mugabe is a reality . . . likewise Peter Chingoka is president of Zimbabwe Cricket and without acting unconstitutionally and unlawfully myself I cannot lawfully remove him from that office,” Coltart said.
Former players and administrators have returned to the game, improving Zimbabwe’s performance to the point where in a seven-match triangular one-day series it hosted this month, Zimbabwe beat a weakened India twice and Sri Lanka once, making the final in front of India.
Coltart hopes Zimbabwe can resume playing Test cricket against weaker nations such as Bangladesh as soon as next year.
Chingoka and ZC chief executive Ozias Bvute, are believed by some to be behind an insidious behind-the-scenes campaign against Australasia’s nomination of John Howard as a future ICC president because of his strident opposition to the Mugabe regime.
What should have been a rubber stamp after Australia and New Zealand eventually settled their differences to nominate the former Australian prime minister has now become an embarrassing vote at the ICC’s annual meeting, which begins tomorrow week.
Not surprisingly, Chingoka and Bvute have hardly been forthcoming with Coltart, who has no direct role with ZC, but his influence is significant and he is determined to re-engage with Australia and New Zealand.
“I have spoken to Zimbabwe Cricket about this (Howard). They say they have not reached a decision,” Coltart said.
“I’ve reached a consensus with them. I as minister and they as Zimbabwe Cricket recognise it’s important that we normalise our relations with all cricket associations.
“Unless we do, we’re not going to achieve our aim of improving Zimbabwe cricket.
“One can hardly normalise relations with New Zealand Cricket and Cricket Australia if our first act is going to be to stand in the way of their preferred choice. Zimbabwe Cricket understand that.”
The ICC annual meeting this month will highlight just how well ZC does understand this.
When All is Not Black and White: Lessons from Zimbabwe
Croz Walsh’s Blog
19 June 2010
I was at Auckland airport, just having returned from Fiji last week (of that more later), when I picked up a discarded copy of The Dominion Post* opened at “Mugabe’s Uneasy Ally Pleads for Kiwi Cricket Tour.” Intrigued — and thinking there could be a lesson here for New Zealand and Fiji — I read on.
David Coltart is the only White member of Zimbabwe’s Cabinet, a member of a breakaway faction of Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party that shares power in a shakily-brokered truce with Mugabe’s Zanu PF party; and he is the country’s leading human rights lawyer. He’s been threatened with imprisonment, survived an assassination attempt, and a number of his supporters and clients have “disappeared.”
How is it possible, I wondered, that this man is in a cabinet headed by one of the world’s worst human rights abusers? A man responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, who ruthlessly crushed all opposition, whose policies impoverished his people and brought the country’s economy to its knees?
“It’s been very difficult for us in the human rights community,” he said, “but in 2008 many of us came to the position that, unless we reached this agreement, Zimbabwe would be taken down to the level of Somalia or Liberia … we were forced to choose between justice and the future.”
“The agreement provided a non-violent evolutionary means of achieving a transition to democracy. Inevitably that meant that some of our goals of holding people to account for terrible crimes would not be achieved [but] by reaching this agreement, we would save lives, potentially hundreds of thousands of lives. And that was a price worth paying.”
So far he thinks his decision was the right one. “There are still huge problems. There is still rampant corruption … ongoing human rights abuses … but there are positive signs … fewer reports of torture … disappearances … a big reduction in the number of political prosecutions.”
“There have also been improvements …Government-controlled TV and radio stations have opened up slightly … an independent daily newspaper began publishing last week … inflation has been brought under control … the cholera epidemic has ended, health clinics have reopened … hospitals stabilised … and 7,000 schools have reopened.”
“There is no guarantee the transitional arrangements will result in a new constitution or free and fair elections, but progress is being made.”
Zimbabwe is cricket-mad. Coltart wants New Zealand to send a team because he thinks sport is a way of uniting and stabilising a country; a way to rebuild national as opposed to partisan pride. Most importantly, he thinks a tour would strengthen the hand of the moderates within Mugabe’s Zanu PF and MDC parties.
His message to the New Zealand Government and people? “If you don’t support the moderates within Zanu PF and the MDC, you play into the hand of the hardliners who were prepared to destroy Zimbabwe in 2008 and are still prepared to take it back to that.”
I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the relevance of David Coltart’s experience and advice to people of goodwill in New Zealand and Fiji.
Thank you, Dompost columnist Nick Venter, for this article. You have given us a better insight into Zimbabwe than Dompost readers have ever had on Fiji. Dominion Post 15 June 2010.
We are not anti-Howard for ICC: Zimbabwe Cricket
Zimbabwe Guardian
By Nancy Pasipanodya
19 June 2010
ZIMBABWE cricket bosses have denied rumours that they are agitating to stymie former Australian Prime Minister John Howard's nomination as a future ICC president. Zimbabwe Cricket says it has not reached a decision on Australasia's elevation of Mr Howard to the game's most senior administrative post despite international media reports saying they opposed the nomination.
Australia and New Zealand nominated him in March to become vice-president and now hope that he will succeed India’s Sharad Pawar, who is about to begin a two-year term.
The ICC’s annual meeting begins today week in Singapore. The venue was shifted to the South East Asian country as ZC President Peter Chingoka is not allowed to travel to Britain.
Mr Howard is a controversial figure who is despised by politicians in Zimbabwe for imposing illegal and crippling sanctions against Zimbabwe. However, cricket bosses in Zimbabwe say their decision to block or aid Howard’s elevation will be purely on sporting, not political, grounds.
Minister of Education and Sport, David Coltart, who visited Australia and New Zealand last week said he had spoken to the cricket bosses, Peter Chingoka (ZC President) and Ozias Bvute (General Manager) about the nomination.
“I have spoken to Zimbabwe Cricket about this (Howard nomination). They say they have not reached a decision,” minister Coltart said.
“I’ve reached a consensus with them. I as minister and they as Zimbabwe Cricket recognise it’s important that we normalise our relations with all cricket associations.
“Unless we do, we’re not going to achieve our aim of improving Zimbabwe cricket.
“One can hardly normalise relations with New Zealand Cricket and Cricket Australia if our first act is going to be to stand in the way of their preferred choice. Zimbabwe Cricket understand that.”
Zimbabwe hopes to be back in Test cricket by next May after voluntarily dropping out four years ago.
Zimbabwe closer to Howard consensus
LadyBuzz News
18 June 2010
By Priya Kotappa
Melbourne, June 17 (ANI): Though there is no guarantee that Zimbabwe Cricket will vote for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s vice-presidential candidacy in the International Cricket Council (ICC), the country’s Sports Minister, David Coltart, hopes common sense will prevail.
Coltart was in Melbourne and Canberra this week to meet with Cricket Australia and the federal government, discussing plans to resume an exchange of cricket tours with Australia while also outlining his nation’s wider progress to Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith.
Howard’s ascendancy to the ICC vice presidency and ultimately presidency had been openly questioned by several member nations, but Coltart said he was hopeful his nation’s cricket board would support the process by which the former prime minister had been selected.
Zimbabwe will be represented by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF aligned Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute, and Coltart cannot guarantee the direction of their vote.
“I won’t be attending because I’m Minister of Sport, and it’s a cricket matter,” Coltart told AAP.
He added: “In terms of Zimbabwe’s laws I do not have the power to give direction to Zimbabwe cricket.
“I will not be in Singapore, but I will meet the Zimbabwe cricket board when I get back next week and convey to them what’s been discussed, and I hope that sense will prevail,” he said. (ANI)
Supporting Howard may supply Zimbabwe with cricket lifeline
Sydney Morning Herald
18 June 2010
By Jamie Pandaram
ZIMBABWE’S Sports Minister David Coltart is desperately hoping his nation’s cricket board will endorse John Howard’s nomination as vice-president of the International Cricket Council, and will urge them to support the former Australian prime minister.
Coltart fears that any move to block Howard’s ascension to the game’s second-highest post could further harm Zimbabwe’s shaky standing in cricket.
Cricket Australia, who nominated Howard, made it clear to Coltart during a meeting on Wednesday that Zimbabwean opposition may jeopardise any future dealings.
Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe has a fierce dislike of Howard, who was critical of his regime while leading Australia and in 2007 ordered the national side not to tour Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe Cricket chairman Peter Chingoka and managing director Ozias Bvute have links to Mugabe.
”There are elements who are antagonistic towards John Howard, but ultimately the discussion by the board must ask, ‘Are we in the business of making friends and building strong relations, or are we in the business of alienating ourselves?’ ” Coltart told theHerald.
”Ultimately, the government can not interfere with Zimbabwe Cricket’s discussion, I can’t as the Sports Minister, under our laws. I think they are going to be pragmatic – I can’t guarantee it, but I think they will.”
Coltart has already managed to convince New Zealand – who agreed to Howard’s nomination after initially recommending their own man, Sir John Anderson – to play Tests against them next year.
Zimbabwe is the only one of the ICC’s 10 member nations without a Test team, having been stripped of the right following a number of irregularities in their financial dealings of ICC funds, and political turmoil.
They will re-enter the Test arena against Bangladesh before hosting New Zealand, a huge step forward.
Coltart said Zimbabwe was not ready to face the Australian Test side just yet, but is working on an exchange that would see Australia A tour his nation next year, and Zimbabwe A visit Australia.
”Sport goes way beyond just cricket, there is an understanding that if, for example, Australia A come to Zimbabwe, well that rebrands Zimbabwe in a very positive light, and helps in luring those in business who want to invest, and tourists,” Coltart said.
Coltart said he hoped Howard would meet with Chingoka and Bvute. Coltart is a founding member of the Movement For Democratic Change, the political organisation that formed a joint government with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. How democratic the nation truly is will be determined by the end of next week, when Zimbabwe Cricket is expected to announce its stance on Howard, apparently free from political persuasion.
Zimbabwe hints at Howard’s ICC chances
The Age
18 June 2010
ZIMBABWE’S Minister for Sport, David Coltart, hopes common sense will prevail when his country votes on John Howard’s International Cricket Council candidacy.
Coltart has been in Melbourne and Canberra this week to meet Cricket Australia and the federal government, discussing plans to resume an exchange of cricket tours with Australia while also outlining his nation’s wider progress to foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith.
Howard’s ascendancy to the ICC vice-presidency and ultimately presidency had been openly questioned by several member nations, but Coltart said he was hopeful his nation’s cricket board would support the process by which the former prime minister had been selected.
But Coltart won’t attend the ICC’s annual conference in Singapore this month.
Instead, Zimbabwe will be represented by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF-aligned Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute, and Coltart cannot guarantee the direction of their vote.
”I won’t be attending because I’m Minister of Sport, and it’s a cricket matter,” Coltart said. ”In terms of Zimbabwe’s laws I do not have the power to give direction to Zimbabwe cricket.
”Aside from the legal situation, as someone who believes in democracy and the important role that civil society plays, I wouldn’t want to be giving directives – I think that’s part of the problem with world cricket and sport in general.
”So I’m simply playing a role of mediator and facilitator.”
AAP
Interview with David Coltart: Zimbabwe’s fragile coalition
ABC Radio Australia
PM, 18 June 2010
With reporter Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Should Australian cricket thaw out its relations with Zimbabwe, two years on from the election that brought in a power-sharing agreement there?
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF Party lost the election of 2008, and after much negotiation were forced to share power with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mr Mugabe, however, remained as President and Zanu-PF still controls a great deal of the government, including the police.
Corruption and political skulduggery got Zimbabwe stripped of its right to field an international team for Test matches, but the Zimbabwe Cricket Union retains voting power on the International Cricket Council.
It’s understood they’ve been wielding that power to try to stop the former prime minister John Howard becoming the new vice-president of the ICC.
David Coltart of the MDC is Zimbabwe’s Minister for Education, Sport and Culture. He’s been having meetings with Cricket Australia and with the Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.
I asked him if it was fair to call the Zimbabwe Cricket Union a Zanu-PF fiefdom.
DAVID COLTART: It certainly had, it’s been led by people who are perceived as being aligned to Zanu-PF but there are many people on the board who I have known for many years who are not Zanu-PF aligned, so that’s not entirely correct.
MARK COLVIN: But I suppose a lot of cricket supporters and probably cricket administrators here, but certainly a lot of cricket supporters would be keen to make sure that if Australians went to Zimbabwe they were not in some way supporting the Mugabe machine.
DAVID COLTART: No of course, and I think that’s a natural concern, there’s strong domestic opinion on that in Australia and all I can say to counter that is that I’ve been one of the principal protagonists against Robert Mugabe for 27 years and I believe, along with Morgan Tsvangirai, that sport has a positive role to play in uniting our country, in helping this transition to democracy and we believe that it would promote that transition if Australia were to play cricket against Zimbabwe.
It’s not to say that the situation is perfect, far from it, but Australians need to know that there has been a change in the administration of cricket in Zimbabwe. We’ve taken a lot of the politics out of it and I think that that’s demonstrated by the team’s performance on the ground in recent weeks.
MARK COLVIN: And people also don’t want to see a situation where Australia would be playing against a team of well fed people in a country where everybody else is starving. That’s not the case anymore?
DAVID COLTART: Well, we still have many, many people starving in Zimbabwe. The question is more what can we do to end that starvation and one of the ways that we can end it is by ensuring that this fragile process of change towards a more democratic order is assisted and by ensuring that we encourage investment into Zimbabwe, business investment and further tourists to boost our economy and in that way help those starving people you refer to.
MARK COLVIN: How much is the campaign to have John Howard as the head of the International Cricket Council playing into all this; because I understand that the Zimbabwe Cricket Union has blocked that?
DAVID COLTART: Well this was a curve ball that I received a few weeks ago. This present trip has been planned for several months and it only came to my attention a few weeks ago that there was this point of contention, or apparent point of contention.
Prior to coming, about 10 days ago, I had a meeting with the president of Zimbabwe Cricket and the CEO and I pointed out to them that it would be utterly pointless in me coming to New Zealand and Australia to seek the normalisation of relations if there were elements within Zimbabwe Cricket seeking to scupper, clearly, what is the clear intent of Cricket Australia.
We then reached a consensus, that is between Zimbabwe Cricket and myself, that I would come in with a mandate to try and normalise those relations, including this issue of John Howard. Suffice it to say that I am going back to Cricket Zimbabwe and I hope that after my meeting with them we can come up with an arrangement which is mutually acceptable to both cricket organisations.
MARK COLVIN: Now on a broader level how is the coalition if you like, I don’t know how you describe it, the extraordinary arrangement as you described it before as a transition to democracy, but essentially power sharing between you and the Zanu-PF, how’s it working?
DAVID COLTART: Well we call it the transitional inclusive government, a bit of a mouthful but that’s what we call it. It is a very fragile process. The agreement which led to this is imperfect, it’s seriously flawed. We knew that from day one.
It’s a very difficult environment to have to govern with people that we’ve been so vigorously opposed to for so many years. We approach policy issues from fundamentally different positions. There are hardliners within the Zanu-PF camp who are doing everything in their power to scupper this deal. So I cannot pretend that it’s easy.
Having said that though I think that we’ve made remarkable progress in the last 15 months – we’ve stabilised the economy, we’ve stopped hyperinflation, we’ve stopped the cholera crisis, we’ve stabilised the health sector.
Regarding the sector I’m responsible for, education, when I took office in February last year I had 80,000 teachers on strike and 7,000 schools closed and an absolutely catastrophic situation. We’ve got the schools open, I have a new rapport with the trade unions and children are back at school.
MARK COLVIN: But can you foresee a moment when Robert Mugabe would actually step away from the presidency?
DAVID COLTART: Well you know we got very close to that in 2008. We have consistent intelligence that after the March 2008 election when he clearly had lost he wanted to stand down. It was only the intervention of the military, so we are told, who persuaded him to stay on. He is, after all, 86 – turns 87 in February – and I see in cabinet clear signs that he’s tired of this game and actually would like a way out.
MARK COLVIN: Zimbabwe’s Minister for Education, Sport and Culture, David Coltart. And you can hear more of that interview on our website from this evening.
Australia to renew ties with Zimbabwe
AFP
17 June 2010
SYDNEY — Australia could renew cricketing ties with Zimbabwe next year starting with a series between the two countries’ A teams, the African country’s Sports Minister David Coltart has revealed.
The Zimbabwe A team will likely tour Australia in mid-2011, the first step in an agreement that would also see an Australia A side play in Zimbabwe.
No Zimbabwean team has toured Australia since 2003.
“There is a spot in 2011, but the trouble is that slot was for two tests in Australia, and… there’s a recognition that to throw this young team into the test arena against Australia at this stage would be counter-productive,” Coltart told Australian Associated Press.
“We’ve discussed other means of utilising that slot but with more appropriate opposition.
“It’s very much tentative at this stage.
“(An A series) is what the discussions are centering on, the exchange of A teams rather than at test level.
“We’ve discussed an exchange of tours, in other words (tours) both ways.”
On Monday New Zealand announced that it too was looking to restore cricketing ties with Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe recently hosted India and Sri Lanka for a triangular one day international series.
Zimbabwe closer to Howard consensus
Sydney Morning Herald
17 June 2010
By Daniel Brettig
AAP
Zimbabwe’s Minister for Sport, David Coltart, hopes common sense will prevail in the case of his country’s vote for the John Howard ICC candidacy.
But like everything else in the slow, precarious regeneration of his stricken nation, nothing is guaranteed.
Coltart has been in Melbourne and Canberra this week to meet with Cricket Australia and the federal government, discussing plans to resume an exchange of cricket tours with Australia while also outlining his nation’s wider progress to Foreign Affairs minister Stephen Smith.
Howard’s ascendancy to the ICC vice presidency and ultimately presidency had been openly questioned by several member nations, but Coltart said he was hopeful his nation’s cricket board would support the process by which the former prime minister had been selected.
However Coltart will not, by choice as well as by law, be active when the ICC decides on Howard at its annual conference in Singapore at the end of the month.
Instead, Zimbabwe will be represented by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF aligned Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute, and Coltart cannot guarantee the direction of their vote.
“I won’t be attending because I’m Minister of Sport, and it’s a cricket matter,” Coltart told AAP.
“In terms of Zimbabwe’s laws I do not have the power to give direction to Zimbabwe cricket.
“Aside from the legal situation, as someone who believes in democracy and the important role that civil society plays, I wouldn’t want to be giving directives – I think that’s part of the problem with world cricket and sport in general.
“So I’m simply playing a role of mediator and facilitator, because Chingoka and Bvute can’t at the present time travel to Australia.
“I will not be in Singapore but I will meet the Zimbabwe cricket board when I get back next week and convey to them what’s been discussed, and I hope that sense will prevail.”
Coltart travelled to New Zealand prior to Australia and will next meet with English officials as he fights for support to strengthen the tentative progress made under the joint government of Zanu-PF and the MDC (Movement For Democratic Change).
“The problem is there is still a lot of general scepticism regarding this provisional arrangement,” he said.
“There still is concern about the slow pace of reform, ongoing human rights violations and related to that the concern that if for example there is re-engagement at this stage, that may buttress Zanu-PF.
“Against that I’ve had to argue that we have to see this process in much the same way as happened in South Africa in the early 1990s. It’s a time of transition, and no-one can guarantee that it’s going to end happily.
“The entire provisional government is highly problematic, I sit on cabinet with Robert Mugabe, who I have been at loggerheads with for 30 years.
“But what takes us through is this belief that we can’t dwell in the past and that in the interests of saving lives and saving the country, we simply have to make this work.
“That involves sometimes taking a deep breath and working for the future.”