Next week South Africa flies across the Limpopo to play three 50-over matches against its neighbour and sometime rival. As far as can be told, the tour serves little purpose other than to fulfil a fixture list and to maintain contact between dispensations.
No one in their right mind expects Zimbabwean cricket to recover until the mass murderers and looters running amok in that country have been tried and executed or incarcerated in the rat infested hellholes into which opponents are dispatched. Now that the ANC is taking an interest in the State-sanctioned murders of the 1980s, it might care to cast an eye over the State-sanctioned massacre that took place in Matabeleland in the same period.
Argument is raging about the rights and wrongs of touring such an infernal, betrayed, lovely land. Familiar with tales of torture, Australia cancelled the visit scheduled for next month. The West Indies ‘A’ side has also refused to tour on the spurious grounds that players might be in danger. Many bad things can be said about Zimbabwe, but not that it is a security risk. Every fifth person works for state security.
Should South Africa refuse to tour Zimbabwe? Is it right to play sport as normal in an abnormal society? Notwithstanding the rules applied by the game's governing body, every country has a right to make up its own mind, and the same applies to every player. Few of the Australians had the stomach to appear amidst such torment, and the boycott came as a blessed relief. No-one understands the symbolic value of a sporting boycott better than this government. As many of us argued in the 1980s, sometimes it is just not right to keep playing ball.
As continentals committed to playing various sports in places of death and decay, South African officials may see things differently. Moreover, cricketing links with Zimbabwe have been strong for several decades and will not lightly be cast aside. If anything they are becoming closer. Last month SA cricket welcomed a group of emerging Zimbabwean players to its high performance centre in Pretoria. Reciprocal ‘A’ team tours have become commonplace.
In any case a boycott is not going to happen. To a fault, political sentiment hereabouts influences sporting policy. The politicians stubbornly refuse to stand side by side with the forces of economic and political liberation showing courage across the Limpopo. Instead the government defends