The Australian government will hold talks with cricket authorities to cancel a Zimbabwe tour that could be seen as giving a ”blessing” to President Robert Mugabe, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Monday.
”I don’t want them to tour Zimbabwe. I think that is the wrong look,” Downer told journalists.
Australia, which is currently defending its World Cup title in the Caribbean, is due to tour violence-racked Zimbabwe later in the year.
But Downer said mounting political violence in the African nation and a crackdown on Mugabe’s opponents meant the tour should be abandoned to help put pressure on the 83-year-old strongman to step aside. ”Of course it won’t hurt the regime if the tour is called off in the sense that a lot of them are not interested in, or enthusiastic about, cricket,” he said.
”But the whole concept of the world’s greatest cricket team and the biggest names in world cricket visiting Zimbabwe and giving the blessing to that country is one that I feel uncomfortable with.”
Downer said he would sit down with governing body Cricket Australia to talk through possible contractual issues, including possible fines of up to $2-million for calling the tour off. ”It might be that they are able to get out of the tour on the back of the rising violence in Zimbabwe. We have to look at the contract in detail,” Downer said, declining to say whether his government would consider covering any cancellation costs.
International criticism of Mugabe has sharpened this month after police cracked down on opposition supporters attempting to attend a banned prayer rally, arresting several activists, including opposition party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Western critics, including Britain and the United States, have threatened more economic sanctions on Mugabe and his government, which is already battling Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation now topping 1 700%. Downer, who has criticised South Africa for not taking a tougher stance against Mugabe as the region’s main economic and military power, said South Africa now acknowledged the need for change in Zimbabwe.
”We’ve been communicating a lot with the South Africans a lot in the last couple of weeks and I think that, frankly, they are very aware that more needs to be done,” he said.
Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, has traded on his legacy as a leading light in Africa’s anti-colonial struggle, blaming Zimbabwe’s problems on Western sabotage after his seizure of white commercial farms. ‒ Reuters