New Zealand’s national cricket team, the Black Caps, will tour Zimbabwe in August and September despite widespread international concerns about the Mugabe government’s human rights record, it was announced on Wednesday.
Naming the team for the tour, New Zealand cricket chief executive Martin Snedden said no players had expressed reluctance to go.
But Rod Donald, co-leader of the Green Party in Parliament, attacked the government, which has been highly critical of Mugabe’s treatment of the opposition and the demolition of squatter camps.
”The government has failed to save the Black Caps from the tyrannical grasp of Robert Mugabe,” Donald said, noting that while it would prefer the tour to be called off it was not prepared to direct the cricketers not to go.
He said Prime Minister Helen Clark had said she would not be seen dead in Zimbabwe and Foreign Minister Phil Goff had condemned the Mugabe regime, but the government had not ”so much as lifted a finger to prevent this tour from happening”.
Donald said the International Cricket Council recognised the right of a government to pull their national side out of a tour for political reasons, which meant New Zealand Cricket would not face a financial penalty for withdrawing.
”It is clearly not in New Zealand’s national interest for our top cricketers to travel to Zimbabwe and bestow legitimacy on one of the world’s most odious regimes,” he said.
”It’s deplorable that the government is dodging this foreign policy challenge by washing its hands of the issue.” – Sapa-DPA