The African National Congress (ANC) has commended the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) decision to go ahead with its match in Harare, Zimbabwe, during the Cricket World Cup.
Ruth Ntshulana-Bhengu, ANC MP and chairperson of the parliamentary sport portfolio committee, said: ”The stance taken by the ECB is in the interest of development of the game of cricket in Zimbabwe in particular and Africa in general.”
Sport had triumphed over political expedience, she said.
”We note attempts to draw comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Zimbabwe. We believe that this comparison is both ill-informed and hypocritical,” said Ntshulana-Bhengu, noting the furore in certain Commonwealth countries over playing in Zimbabwe amidst a debate about the human rights record of South Africa’s neighbour.
She said the sport boycott against apartheid South Africa ”was a correct tactic because sport in South Africa under successive apartheid regimes was an expression of that regime’s commitment to white minority domination to (the) exclusion of all other South Africans”.
”This informed apartheid South Africa’s policy in sport. This is certainly not the case with Zimbabwe where there is no sport policy which seeks to marginalise certain racial groupings.”
Further, she said the government of Zimbabwe was elected in a poll ”where all legitimate voters participated, unlike in apartheid South Africa where only a small section of the population participated in elections”.
She said matters of dispute in the political arena must not be allowed to interfere with sport.
The official opposition Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Donald Lee, however, has called for a boycott of matches in Zimbabwe involving six nations including Australia and England, the governments of which have sought their national teams to stay away.
Lee said it was similar to the participation of international sporting teams in the Berlin Olympics of 1936 during Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany. – I-Net Bridge