Guardian
By Andy Bull
Sunday 20 February 2011
Much has changed in the troubled African country since their last World Cup appearance
“Cricket is Zimbabwe in microcosm. But we have had more success in rebuilding our cricket than we have in other areas.” David Coltart should know. For the past two years he has been Zimbabwe’s minister for education, sport, arts and culture. He has been at the heart of the rebuilding process that has seen Zimbabwean cricket, like the country itself, tentatively brought back from the brink of ruin.
In Harare on 11 March 2007 a civilian was shot dead by the police during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest rally and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, of which Coltart was a founding member, was arrested then tortured in his cell. The same day Zimbabwe took part in the opening ceremony of the last World Cup. They were missing many of their white players, who had quit the team in protest at the way the sport was being run. They endured a dismal tournament. The previous year they had suspended themselves from Test cricket, and, for the first time in more than a century, the Logan Cup – Zimbabwe’s first-class domestic competition – was cancelled.
Four years on, and Tsvangirai and Coltart both serve in Zimbabwe’s coalition government. Many of those white players have returned from exile. The team play their first match of the 2011 World Cup on Monday, against Australia. Heath Streak, whose father was imprisoned in 2002 because he had refused to hand over his family farm, is now the bowling coach. Grant Flower, who left in 2004 saying “never again”, is the batting coach. They work alongside the very men with whom they once argued so bitterly. “Cricket,” says Coltart, “has already played an important role in reconciling not just racial groups within the country, but also people with different political opinions.”
Coltart is the man who began this healing process. He understands better than anyone the links between Zimbabwean sport, politics and society. “Sport has a huge role to play in reconciling the nation to itself,” he says. “You cannot separate cricket from wider political events. When Morgan Tsvangirai and all of us in the MDC entered into this transitional government we knew it was an imperfect arrangement. We had to go into cabinet with someone I personally have opposed for my entire professional career. But we did it in the interests of the country, because we realised the country faced total collapse. It has been very difficult, but the point is we have done it for the benefit of the people. And the same applies to cricket. Yes there are people who were certainly associated with [Robert] Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in the past. And yes, it was necessary to work with them if we were going to take the nation, and cricket, forward.”
It took Flower six months to make up his mind to return. “But I kept asking myself, ‘do you want to help Zimbabwe recover?'” he says, “‘Or do you just stay bitter?'” Streak agrees. “Of course there was scepticism at first but now this is all about keeping cricket alive in Zimbabwe.”
“Whether we like it or not Zanu-PF is a political party in this country,” says Coltart. “It still enjoys the support of probably 20-30% of the population and we can’t ignore that.”
He has plenty of reason not to like it. He has seen first hand the crimes that have been committed and survived an assassination attempt himself in 2003, when he and two of his children were pursued by armed men in a car chase through Bulawayo.
A committed Christian and a human rights lawyer, he believes that peaceful reconciliation can be brought about through dialogue. “In the same way Peter Chingoka [the president of Zimbabwe Cricket] has been part of Zimbabwean cricket for three decades. He is well known in cricketing circles and is certainly well-liked by some cricket-playing nations. To that extent we can’t just ignore his presence. So the reconciliation that has taken place between the likes of Heath Streak and Grant Flower and Peter Chingoka does provide a model for the country at large.”
Of course Chingoka was never guilty of the kinds of crimes that have been committed in the name of Zanu-PF but he was widely accused of embezzling enormous amounts of money that should have been channelled into cricket. While Coltart suspected as much himself he has examined the accounts of Zimbabwe Cricket’s finances and is convinced that those accusations were untrue. The ICC has reached the same conclusion.
Now Coltart is desperate for more support from the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia. At present it is not forthcoming. Scotland were due to tour Zimbabwe last winter and were keen to do so but were advised to pull out by the British government. Several county teams have also been told to withdraw from planned tours, as was an MCC fact-finding mission. Nick Compton, the Somerset batsman, spent the winter playing for the Mashonaland Eagles, one of the five new franchises set up by Zimbabwe Cricket. Like many of the people who have visited Zimbabwe recently, his opinion is clear.
“I think it’s pathetic,” Compton says. “I can’t understand it. I think it is a bureaucratic decision. I couldn’t think of a better place for a county side to go on a tour, or for English pros to go and further their game. But of course there is the spectre of Mugabe and that is what it stems from.”
“I supported the boycott against South Africa because white South African sport was so closely linked to the apartheid regime it was indistinguishable,” Coltart says. “Whereas you cannot say that about sportsmen and women in Zimbabwe.” He suggests that Zimbabwe have made a better job of integrating their cricket than has been done in South Africa. “Right up to the 1999 World Cup, two decades after independence, our team was predominantly white. Whilst the last 10 years have been very painful for us we can now say that cricket is a national sport. And so that has been the one benefit of these years of trauma.” Compton found that while there was still baggage and resentment among some of the older players, the younger generation of cricketers were learning that “the whole priority has to be about cricket. White, black, green, or purple, it doesn’t matter”.
Political violence and unrest is increasing in Zimbabwe. Coltart believes this is because hardliners within Zanu-PF are trying to stop the transition towards democracy. “Zimbabwe is in a similar point in its history to where South Africa was in the early 1990s,” he said. He draws a comparison with the assassination in 1993 of Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party. There was also widespread rioting in KwaZulu-Natal and plots to derail the negotiations to end apartheid. “My point is that the West didn’t give up on that process despite the atrocities that took place in South Africa.”
He does not think that England and Australia should blindly switch from censuring Zimbabwe to supporting it but believes cricket tours would “boost those who have been calling for this non-violent transition to democracy,” as well as advancing reconciliation between those countries and Zimbabwe. “It is important that those people in Zimbabwe who are committed to seeing this transition through are encouraged and supported, through sports tours, through contact, through encouraging all the moderates in society. That’s what we ask of the West now.”