OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 2.30pm.
DISGRACED former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje has won the sympathy of someone catching as much flak as he is – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
The Star on Wednesday quoted Mugabe as saying: “I’m heartbroken by what the chap is going through. I never thought he would be lost to cricket so early in his career. “He used to be very good but, as he said, Satan got the better of him.”
Mugabe was referring to a much-ridiculed confession by Cronje in which he said the devil made him take money from a bookmaker.
Cronje was fired in April after he admitted that he had accepted $10000 to $15000 dollars for providing information and forecasts on matches during a triangular series with England and Zimbabwe.
The King Commission of inquiry into corruption in South African cricket has in the past week heard that Cronje on several occasions also offered team mates money to under-perform.
Mugabe said he is an avid cricket fan and is following the work of the Commission closely.
“Even here at home I follow cricket very closely. I’m actually a patron of the local team. See, I’m not anti-white,” he said. “I had great, great respect for that young man. What a marvellous captain he was.”
“What is even more sad,” he added, “is that it wasn’t even much money. It’s a pity, a real pity.”
Mugabe is facing the worst moment of his 20-year rule.
Zimbabwe is in economic crisis, political violence is rife in the run-up to elections and he has been slated for plans to seize white-owned farms. — AFP