Wisden Cricketer

by Emma John

11 August 2010

Henry Olonga was the man who, alongside Andy Flower, risked everything standing up to Robert Mugabe at the 2003 World Cup. Now he’s ready to tell his story.

For those of a nervous disposition, Henry Olonga needs to carry a health warning. Within minutes of meeting him, he has demanded my life story, then peppers my faltering response with questions. Twenty minutes later, when I feel I’ve regained control of the situation and switch my tape recorder on, he looms over it and intones, solemnly, “Why did the chicken cross the road … ?” before leaning back in his chair, pleased with himself.

His wife, Tara, sits at his side with a tolerant expression. She seems used to this sort of behaviour, occasionally telling him in an exasperated voice to calm down a little. I can’t tell how much is Olonga’s innately irrepressible character and how much is for my benefit – he is, by his own admission, “a natural performer”. But I’m not sure it matters: either way, the former fast bowler is clearly a bit of a handful.

Perhaps I was expecting something more reserved, more statesmanlike. The image of Olonga that endures – will always endure – is that of the political protestor at the 2003 World Cup; the man who sacrificed his playing career, and his safety, to take a stand against Robert Mugabe’s regime by wearing a black armband to mourn “the death of democracy” in Zimbabwe. Forced to flee his home and, seven years later, still living in exile, Olonga might be expected to be serious, resigned, haunted even. Anything, in fact, but this bundle of energy seemingly wired to an invisible and non-depleting power source.

Wearing a Lashings shirt and looking trim, he has arrived at this pizza restaurant in Barnes in south-west London, a short way from where he lives, after a day of meetings about his autobiography, to be published this month. At a time when ghosted works are rushed to the shelves before the subject has even finished living the story, it is interesting that it has taken Olonga so many years to commit his to print – he has turned down approaches in the past, feeling that he was “still very raw” and unsure that he had lived enough to merit an entire book.

The timing of its launch couldn’t be more fortuitous. Zimbabwe is re-emerging as a topic of debate at the highest levels. After five years as one of the most shambolic and vilified of cricket nations – its Test status revoked, its finances scrutinised, its tours cancelled – order is, apparently, close to being restored. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union has readmitted previously blackballed senior players to the side and appointed respected coaches in Alan Butcher and Grant Flower. It is even lobbying for a return of its Test status and England coach Andy Flower, brother of Grant and Olonga’s fellow World Cup protestor, has appealed for his home country to be returned to the fold. MCC is now hoping to send a team to Zimbabwe on a fact-finding tour, which could be the first step in that process.

Olonga’s father John and older brother Victor still live in Zimbabwe. His mother lives in Australia but has begun to consider returning (“she misses home”). Olonga says he misses “certain aspects – friends, the lifestyle, the climate, the friendliness of the people”, but he doesn’t say it as if he’s desperate to go back any time soon. You wonder, of course, if he would be allowed to return – and what would happen to him if he did. “I can’t answer that,” he says, sounding serious for the first time. “I just don’t know what would happen. It’s possible there would be no problem. But while Robert Mugabe is still the premier I think it’s wise for me to say I consider it unsafe.”

He remains, officially, stateless – Olonga did not claim asylum when he fled first to South Africa and then, two months later, to the UK, and his ongoing application for British citizenship was sent back to square one when he married his Australian wife Tara. His Zimbabwe citizenship cannot be reinstated without visiting the country. He hints in his book that he and Tara may soon begin a new life in Australia.

But he is clearly tremendously grateful for his life in Britain and for the compassion and the opportunities it has afforded him.

“I came here with nothing,” he says, “but in a short amount of time I was shown a tremendous amount of kindness. There were total strangers who wanted to help me settle down here – some people sent £50, or £100, saying ‘Welcome to England’.” David Folb, Lashings’ gregarious impresario, welcomed him into his home for the first two years of his stay and signed him up to play for his roving all-stars. There were other generous work offers – TV producer Gary Franses, who had sought Olonga out on the very evening of his black armband protest, gave him commentary stints on Channel 4’s coverage, and the BBC hired him for Test Match Special.

Punditry wasn’t the career for him (“no one was going to remember me for my bowling figures”, he writes humbly in his book). Instead, while paying his bills on the speaking circuit – his Christian faith means he is as much in demand in churches as he is at club dinners – he has spent the last few years pursuing a more creative bent. He has recorded an album of his own music, Aurelia; his rich singing voice won him the title of Five’s All-Star Talent Show in 2006 although the music industry has proved a tough one to break and he has learned the hard way that record producers are not always as enthusiastic about you as they appear. He has rediscovered photography, another artistic outlet he had to jettison when he became a professional sportsman. He is learning web design and videography. He does the odd painting. “I am up to my eyeballs in glorified hobbies,” he declares. One glance at his website confirms this.

Despite all that has happened to him since, Olonga says Zimbabwe was a great place to grow up. “The opportunities I had were extraordinary,” he points out, “for a young black man in a country that only 20 years earlier had had segregation.” After his parents split up, he grew up with his father, a Kenyan doctor, on an acre in Bulawayo. The family were middle-class although Olonga says they “didn’t have a flash house”; while his father loved cars and owned a couple, they never had a swimming pool, which was the proof of privilege in
the neighbourhood.

He was, however, extremely lucky in his education, and attended a state school that offered extra-curricular activities from Gilbert and Sullivan to a toast-making club. He “made the most of everything it offered”, including its excellent sports coaching; in his teens he was running 100m in 10.6sec and reaching 7.35m in the long jump. But the departure of his athletics trainer and mentor spelled the end of his vague dreams of Olympic glory; instead he switched his attention to the cricket pitch, where his speed lent itself to seriously fast, if wild, bowling. By 17 he was being touted as a future fast bowler for the national team – and, even more significantly, as the country’s first black player.

In the end that title brought as much heartache as honour. As Olonga is the first to admit, he was a fairly average bowler and his eight years playing for Zimbabwe were made difficult through injury and inconsistent form but also, notably, by relationships in the dressing room, where tensions surrounding the cricket union’s racial policies (including quotas of black players) were high. Olonga says he got on well with the large majority of the team. “There were a couple of guys who were jerks,” he says candidly, “but they were jerks because they were jerks, not because they were white.”

As the World Cup approached, Olonga had just regained his best form and found some peace within his turbulent career. “Have you heard the song ‘Exhale’, by Whitney Houston?” he asks, a touch earnestly. “It was like that. I just went ‘Stuff ’em, I’m going to go out there and enjoy myself from now on.’” He had no thought of using the tournament as a political platform. And even when he agreed to join Flower in the protest – a brave step for anyone to take under a regime of brutality – you get the impression that the 27-year-old Olonga had no idea what the consequences would be.
He says he never imagined that his worst-case scenario would come true, that he’d “be sitting in England talking about not being a cricketer any more”.

I ask how often he sees Flower now. Rarely. If you thought that risking life and limb together was the basis of an undying friendship, you’d be wrong. Olonga has been open about the fact that they used not to get along and their working relationship in the team was always civil but cool. As he talks about visiting Flower at his Essex home, he starts, for the first time, to lose his fluency; it looks as if his general goodwill to all is about to crack. It turns out he’s just bitten a chilli. As he disappears for a glass of water, Tara leans forward. “I think the black armband was a really healing process between them,” she says. “It shed away a lot of stuff.”

Olonga returns and wants to know what we’ve been saying about him. He jokes that he texts Flower when England do well and when they do badly “I do nothing, because it seems like the right thing to do.” Then he suddenly changes tone. “He’s a legend. I’m a guy who couldn’t get in the side. I’m never going to be remembered for my cricket. But in spite of that, two different cricketers, different abilities, different backgrounds, different races, different world views, we were able to put our differences aside to stand up for the common good and I think there’s a lesson in that.”

In the aftermath of the black armband affair Olonga was a vocal, and influential, supporter of the removal of sporting links with Zimbabwe, both in England and in New Zealand, where the Green Party flew him out to join their (ultimately successful) campaign to stop the Black Caps’ 2005 tour. But after years spent urging boycotts he says he has recently reconsidered his stance. “It denied those young players the chance to play and I’m not pleased about that. Now that change is coming, albeit in a different way than I envisaged, it’s only fair enough that I should reassess my position. I’m sad that having made progress for 10 years we lost it all and went backwards. We lost a whole generation of players.”

He says he now backs the slow re-integration of Zimbabwe cricket, although he’s aware that certain corrupt officials – “the men I truly despise” – remain in the game at the highest level. It’s a situation, he says, that mirrors that of the country’s coalition government. “Young people of the country deserve better and, if the coalition government is one way to ease the turmoil, strife, suffering, brutality that’s happened, then yes, I’ll put my weight behind it. But ultimately the rot is much deeper than anything they will deal with.

“As long as those leaders who have been perpetrators of all those human rights abuses are still around it’s just a facelift. They’ve just tightened things to make it look a little more pretty but the underlying truth exists: you’re still an old granny, just with a tight face.” Clearly a politicised man, Olonga is nevertheless honest that he’s really only as informed as any other interested party who reads the papers. He talks to his father “occasionally” and has just one ‘inside’ contact – David Coltart, the Zimbabwe minister of sport.

One wonders how much Olonga’s life has become defined by that one, extraordinary gesture. I ask him how it and its consequences – the sudden, enforced retirement from the only job he had ever done; the flight abroad to countries he barely knew – have changed him as a person. He refers me to the final chapter of his book and when I get home, I look it up. He writes that the experience “stretched” him and “made me grow up”. “From the moment I walked out on to the cricket pitch in Harare,” he writes, “I have felt like I am in some kind of dream world … I sometimes fail to grasp that I am not an international cricketer any more. But then suddenly this roller coaster took off and it hasn’t stopped. The way the whole thing has played out, I sometimes find myself metaphorically pinching myself, saying, ‘Did I really do that?’”

The Standard

11 August 2010

by Jennifer Dube

MASVINGO — Nyelet Makaya and Rumbidzai Marume may be young but they are fully aware that they have been rescued from a possible life of misery.

The little girls from Rujeko primary school recently recounted how a local non-governmental organisation rekindled their hope for a better future by enrolling them in its “textbooks for tuition fees” scheme.

Nyelet (8) and Rumbidzai (11) are among thousands of primary school pupils benefiting from a partnership between Dananai Children (Dachi) Care and 689 schools in the province.

Under the scheme, Dachi provides schools with textbooks and in return the disadvantaged children are allowed to attend classes for a period determined using the value of the books.

School authorities assist with the tallying of the value of the books against the fee structure to determine how many children can be covered by each consignment.

“My fees are being paid for with textbooks from Dachi,” says Rumbidzai who is in Grade VI.
“In the past, I would go for many terms without paying fees because my mother did not have the money.
“The school authorities used to send me back home  and I would still come back for classes without paying.

“At times, my mother would come and beg them to allow me to learn while she looked for the money.
“In most cases, they would ask her to pay but when this did not happen I would feel much better as I would attend classes without anyone bothering me asking for the fees.”

Rumbidzai had a similar story to tell as Nyelet and 64 other beneficiaries from Rujeko.
The school’s teacher-in-charge, Grace Mambanje, said most of the beneficiaries could not afford to pay fees even during the Zimbabwe dollar era.
Each pupil now pays US$20 fees per term following the dollarisation of the economy last year.

Mambanje said the project known as the Block Grants programme was benefiting both the school and the pupils.
She said while two pupils shared a textbook in the past, each of the 1 000 children at the school now had a textbook for all subjects.
Mambanje added that the performance of most beneficiaries had improved significantly since the introduction of the scheme.

“Most of these pupils previously lost a lot of valuable learning time being sent home to ask for school fees they would not get and in some cases, others were forced to assist their parents in trying to raise the fees after school. All these   things contributed to their poor performance in classes,” she said.
Paul Matsime, a monitoring and evaluation officer with Dachi’s implementing partner, Family Aids Caring Trust (Fact) Masvingo, said the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) provided the books for the scheme.

He said some schools had been supplied with books worth seven years of primary school tuition fees for some beneficiaries.
Matsime also revealed that in cases where some pupils graduated from primary schools or simply dropped out of the programme for one reason or another, others would be taken on board to fill the gap.

Unicef chief communications officer, Micaela De Soussa, said her organisation worked with various NGOs across the country to implement the scheme, with some schools also receiving book cupboards, chalk, flip charts and other education materials.

De Soussa said the Education Transition Fund (ETF) which is expected to be launched soon, will complement the scheme.
“The Block Grants programme together with the first phase of the ETF prioritise primary schools,” she said.

“We already have 50% material for the first phase of the ETF and we are waiting to get the remainder so we can embark on a massive distribution to all primary schools across the country.

“At this stage, a lot of children may worry about what will happen after primary school-level but those worries will be partly answered under the second phase of the ETF which will cover all secondary schools.”

The programme is part of a US$70 million fund approved in 2007 under Unicef’s programme of support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs).
The multi-donor fund was established in response to the national action plan for OVCs aimed at reducing children’s vulnerability through supporting them in areas of education, health care, social services and household supplies.

The programme is one of the most ambitious efforts aimed at reviving the country’s tottering education sector. Teachers say it is and a step in the right direction towards the attainment of the universal access to primary school education as spelt out in the UN’s millennium development goals.
The programme also  complements the revived Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) which is benefiting 60 pupils at Rujeko.

Ministers David Coltart and Paurina Mpariwa for education and social services respectively, could not be immediately reached for comment.
But Mambanje has a piece of advice to government – improve teachers’ working conditions to complement the donors’ efforts.
She said government and its partners could also offer more support to the beneficiaries some of whom cannot afford decent clothing and come to school on empty stomachs.

More support is needed to assist deserving children who could not make it to either the Block Grants or the Beam schemes, she said.

www.cricketscotland.com

9 August 2010

In Tales from Afghanistan on Sunday 15 August, Magnus Linklater is in discussion with James Fergusson, author of Taliban and former Sunday Times Foreign Correspondent, and Tim Albone, director of Out of the Ashes, a film that captures the uplifting story about the Afghan cricket’s team, and hears their views about what lies in store for Afghanistan, its people and the West’s presence in the country.

Later the same day, former Zimbabwe cricket captain Henry Olonga joins David Coltart, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Culture, and Andy Thompson, director of the film Mugabe, to discuss with Magnus Linklater the topic Where now for Zimbabwe?

Then, to round off the cricketing feast, you can watch the Out of the Ashes film itself, in the Film Gallery at Traquair House, preceded by a short film from Afghan Connection.

Meanwhile, to understand how the Zimbabwean media is treating the subject of cricket, you might also wish to read the report in last week’s Zimbabwe Independent about Scotland’s scheduled I-Cup match next month, and where it will be played: click HERE to read it.

And, since we are talking matters cultural, what about taking in Balamory‘s Archie the Inventor – aka comedian Miles Jupp – at the Edinburgh Festival? Here’s what Andrew Miller wrote about him on cricinfo recently:

Sitting in the Oval crowd on the final day of the Ashes in 2005, the comedian Miles Jupp experienced a “Damascene moment”. Down on his luck in his chosen career, and jealously observing the lucky few who were being paid to watch the sport he loved, he decided he would chance his arm at something completely different – and resolved to become a cricket journalist.

“Joining the press corps seemed like the perfect job,” said Jupp. “The more I thought about it, the more romantic my vision of life inside that world became: a clubby and convivial group of cricket lovers travelling the world together, watching the game and sharing stories about it, working and hunting as a pack.”

And so, with that idyllic vision in mind, he set his sights on England’s tour of India in February and March 2006, and even managed to extract vague promises of work via his contacts at the BBC and The Western Mail. However, upon arrival, he found himself completely out on a limb.

“I was left in India for a month with no pass, no work and the monumental task of looking busy,” he said. “It is incredibly hard to look busy when you have absolutely nothing to do. It is frowned upon to make excited, girly noises when a famous player is standing near you. And it is difficult to be taken seriously as a cricket journalist when more and more of your colleagues in the press box start noticing that you look a lot like one of the actors in the children’s television series Balamory.”

The net result, however, was to furnish Jupp with a stock of raw material which he has now taken back to his original career as a stand-up comic. “It was a month in which I was sometimes embarrassed, humiliated, self-conscious, bored, lonely or horribly sick,” he added. “But also at other times I was excited, accepted, joyful, got to mix with my heroes and learned to understand my relationship with the game.”

www.unicef.org

by Tapuwa L. Mutseyekwa

4 August 2010

For most people in Zimbabwe, the expression of joy and happiness are best done through music and drama. It was in this spirit that children in Bulawayo inundated the first sensitisation ceremony of the Education Transition Fund (ETF) with an array of drama, song, poem and dance.

In a dramatisation act of the their school life before and after the roll out of the ETF in Zimbabwe, children at Mpumelelo Primary school showed the misery of having limited learning resources and the new found joy with the arrival of materials provided under ETF programme.

“This atmosphere of joy and celebration is a correct expression of how children are feeling today,” said the school headmistress Mrs. Priscilla Chibelu. “At one time it was a miserable experience to come to school, because for most children there were no learning materials to benefit form” said Mrs. Chibelu.

Indeed, many schools are moving beyond these grim days as UNICEF and the inclusive Government of Zimbabwe work towards meeting the pledge made in September 2009 to supply all 5,300 primary schools with stationery and textbooks. Already, most schools have had the stationery supplies of writing books, chalks, pens and pencils delivered to their schools.  Steel cabinets to be used for the storage of these supplies have also been delivered while more than 60% of the textbooks have already been printed and await the commencement of the distribution process.

Speaking on behalf of the UNICEF Representative Dr. Peter Salama, UNICEF Chief of Communication, Ms. Micaela Marques De Sousa said UNICEF remained committed to ensuring quality education for all Zimbabwe’s children and urged parents to share the vision of protecting children’s education.

“We are cognizant of the fact that textbooks, learning materials and supplies are necessary, but they remain tentative steps towards attaining quality and improving access to education”, she said “Unless we successfully mobilise communities, parents, teachers and learners to work together and share the vision and ambition of the Education Transition Fund Programme, we will not achieve much”.

While most of the schools in Zimbabwe have received their stationery, it is calculated that by the beginning of 2011, every primary school student will be in possession of a textbook in all the four core subjects, including books printed in the minority indigenous languages such as Venda and Tonga.  The Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture, Sen. David Coltart highlighted that the next step in the revitilisation of the education sector is to respond to the needs of the teachers, including their remuneration, accommodation and other basic needs.

“We applaud the dedication and commitment that our teachers continue to display”, said Sen. Coltart. “Most of them, particularly those in the rural areas, live in very squalid conditions and continue to live on a very minimal pay, but they remain committed to their duty.

Over the last decade, Zimbabwe’s education sector has seriously been affected by limited resources to replenish stationery and textbooks stocks. Coupled with the difficulty in awarding teachers attractive salaries, learning had come to a near halt in most schools. Over the next three months, sensitisation and awareness programmes will be rolled out in all the ten provinces of the country alerting parents and communities of how ETF is set to restore the lost glory in the education sector.

Newsday

by Staff Writer

3 August 2010

Education, Sport, Art and Culture ministry has submitted proposals to Cabinet to improve salaries and other working conditions of teachers, a minister has said.

Education minister David Coltart announced this during a workshop at Mpumelelo Primary School in Mpopoma, Bulawayo, last week. He was speaking on the $52 million Education Transition Fund which has seen the production of 13 million textbooks for primary school children in the country.

He said apart from the supply of textbooks and other learning materials, the improvement of conditions of service of teachers was critical for the success of the education revival programme.

Coltart said he last week submitted a plan drawn up by his ministry to address the issue of teachers’ welfare and Cabinet was expected to debate on the matter soon.

“I can’t divulge the contents of the plan,” Coltart said. “However, apart from the provision of textbooks, the plight of teachers, who have played an important role under exceptionally difficult circumstances, is covered.”

Coltart said teachers were getting salaries that were way below what they should be receiving but most of them had remained loyal to the profession.

He said apart from proposals on salaries, the ministry was also seeking to improve teachers’ accommodation, especially in rural areas where most teachers lived in “squalid conditions”. Coltart was recently in Britain where he addressed an international conference on the challenges the education sector in Zimbabwe. “It is clear that government does not have sufficient resources to stabilise the education sector in Zimbabwe,’’ he said.

The minister said despite numerous problems spawned by the system of teacher incentives paid by parents, he did not feel persuaded to stop the practice.

Coltart said stopping incentives would be a “populist move” but would seriously “haemorrhage” the education sector. He said incentives were a form of supplementary income for teachers to “stem” the mass exodus of these professionals. Coltart said between 2007 and 2008, Zimbabwe lost about 20 000 teachers, mostly to neighbouring countries.

Newsday

By Staff Writer

2 August 2010

Education, Sport, Art and Culture ministry has submitted proposals to Cabinet to improve salaries and other working conditions of teachers, a minister has said.

Education minister David Coltart announced this during a workshop at Mpumelelo Primary School in Mpopoma, Bulawayo, last week. He was speaking on the $52 million Education Transition Fund which has seen the production of 13 million textbooks for primary school children in the country.

He said apart from the supply of textbooks and other learning materials, the improvement of conditions of service of teachers was critical for the success of the education revival programme.

Coltart said he last week submitted a plan drawn up by his ministry to address the issue of teachers’ welfare and Cabinet was expected to debate on the matter soon.

“I can’t divulge the contents of the plan,” Coltart said. “However, apart from the provision of textbooks, the plight of teachers, who have played an important role under exceptionally difficult circumstances, is covered.”

Coltart said teachers were getting salaries that were way below what they should be receiving but most of them had remained loyal to the profession.

He said apart from proposals on salaries, the ministry was also seeking to improve teachers’ accommodation, especially in rural areas where most teachers lived in “squalid conditions”. Coltart was recently in Britain where he addressed an international conference on the challenges the education sector in Zimbabwe. “It is clear that government does not have sufficient resources to stabilise the education sector in Zimbabwe,’’ he said.

The minister said despite numerous problems spawned by the system of teacher incentives paid by parents, he did not feel persuaded to stop the practice.

Coltart said stopping incentives would be a “populist move” but would seriously “haemorrhage” the education sector. He said incentives were a form of supplementary income for teachers to “stem” the mass exodus of these professionals. Coltart said between 2007 and 2008, Zimbabwe lost about 20 000 teachers, mostly to neighbouring countries.