2 December 2007

Ray Price

I’m glad that Ray Price is playing for Zimbabwe again. I rate him as the best left-arm spinner in the world with Daniel Vettori.

He bowled well in the test against Australia that I saw in Sydney and he was a key player in Zimbabwe’s victory against the West Indies yesterday in Harare.

Price returned to Zimbabwe from England recently after rejecting a new contract with Worcestershire where he spent four seasons. In 2004 he was one of 15 players who went on strike to oppose Zimbabwe Cricket’s (ZC) regime.

He has taken 69 wickets in 18 Tests at 35.86, but in 2003-04 took 33 wickets at 22.42 from five tests.

He is said to have consulted Heath Streak, Trevor Gripper and other former teammates before returning. In my view Price would make an ideal captain.

Tags: cricket, Sport, Zimbabwe
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21 November 2007

Vale Ian Smith

The world lost a significant man today. I won’t call him a great man, even though I believe him to be one, because there is too much controversy surrounding him, and in terms of greatness, he failed his mission.

Ian Smith was a war veteran who led his country of Rhodesia through what many thought were its most turbulent years.

As the architect of UDI (the unilateral declaration of independence) he gave Southern Rhodesia the sovereignty which had been its constitutional right years earlier.

Many people forget that Rhodesia could have had independence or union with South Africa, except for some intransigence and historical quirks which linked it temporarily in the 1950s with modern Zambia and Malawi instead.

Read more »

Tags: opinion, politics, world, Zimbabwe
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4 November 2007

Zimbabwe inflation

When I visited Zimbabwe in 1991 the currency was stable and the country was relatively prosperous. The Zimbabwe dollar was worth about the same as the rand, almost two to one Australian dollar.

That’s hard to believe now, considering the inflation rate hit 7634 percent in June.

I bought this old banknote in Harare. It’s interesting to note the end of white majority in 1980 rule didn’t herald an economic collapse. Mugabe’s paranoia was responsible for that.

Tags: opinion, Zimbabwe
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13 May 2007

Zimbabwe tour cancelled

The Australian Government has forbidden our national cricket team from touring Zimbabwe later this year. I can’t recall such a decision ever being made before.

Sporting contact was banned with South Africa from about 1970 until the end of apartheid, but in terms of overseas tours I believe it was a voluntary decision of the sporting bodies.

I have previously opposed stopping cricket tours of Zimbabwe. The sport there was mainly played by the minority white population until recently, the Zimbabwe government took little interest and a ban would have been meaningless.

I still don’t accept the argument that a cricket tour would be a propaganda boost for Robert Mugabe, as claimed. I don’t think he cares.

It sends the wrong message though, if Australia does tour; that we condone what is happening in Zimbabwe. Certainly we don’t and for that reason I support the government’s decision.

Tags: cricket, politics, Sport, Zimbabwe
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23 March 2007

Another sad story from Zimbabwe

There was a letter to the editor in The West Australian this week which moved me to tears, something which doesn’t happen very often these days as I become hardened to the world. I wish there was a link, or that I had the hard copy in front of me to reprint extracts, but I don’t just now.

A group in Perth plans a charity fundraiser to assist old-age pensioners in Bulawayo who are living in poverty thanks to Mugabe’s economic policies.

The letter writer astutely doesn’t say the pensioners are white, but refers to them as former policemen, teachers and railway employees. She made the point these people saved for their retirement but have seen their standard of living destroyed by hyper inflation.

The sentence that broke me was that many are “eating dog food and garden weeds” to survive. They rely on monthly gift packs from a charity to get small parcels of food.

The innocent casualties of Mugabe’s brutality are both black and white, of course. There is something especially tragic though about former public servants having to eat weeds because the state is incompetent.

My previous post that Britain should invade Zimbabwe drew quite a response, including a mention by The Radical Soldier.

For the record, I am Australian born and bred. My wife is South African, I have friends from Zimbabwe and I have visited the country.

Tags: politics, society, Zimbabwe
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11 March 2007

Britain should invade Zimbabwe

I’m not the first person to notice Britain’s hypocrisy in relation to Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe. As readers of the Daily Telgraph commented, if Zimbabwe had a thimblefull of oil it would have been brought into line by now.

Europe intervened in the Balkans and the “coalition of the willing” did a job in Iraq, but nobody seems to care about Zimbabwe.

Britain, in my view, has more legal grounds to invade Zimbabwe than it did Iraq. Britain was the former colonial power in Rhodesia and negotiated the Lancaster House Agreement.

The agreement is actually worth reading. It sets out the principles under which democratic Zimbabwe should have been governed, and was in fact governed for the first few years.

Mugabe has clearly violated the agreement. He has breached conditions including white representation in parliament, independence of the judiciary, citizenship and payment of pensions.

These should be sufficient grounds for Britain to demand change or otherwise invade. Who knows? Maybe John Howard will even commit a couple of hundred Australian troops.

Get a stable, decent government in place and my guess is that thousands of white Zimbabweans and black middle class professionals will return to the country and make it prosper.

Tags: politics, Zimbabwe
13 comments


11 March 2007

Victoria Falls

This is the last in my current nostalgia series. The photo was taken in October 1990 at Victoria Falls from the Zambian side.

I did a week-long tour of Zimbabwe and really enjoyed the spectacle of the falls. With another Australian, two Swiss and an Italian we hired bikes, hazarded the border crossing and took a glimpse from Zambia as well.

We paid a kid to watch our bikes while we walked a steep part of the bush track. We also haggled with traders for souvenirs and I picked up a nicely carved wooden hippo.

Tags: Africa, memories, travel, youth, Zambia, Zimbabwe
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18 November 2006

Coincidence

Fate has delivered a couple of interesting coincidences in the past week.

Firstly, a friend I hadn't seen for more than 15 years contacted me at work. I met Carol, from Zimbabwe, at Alice Springs in 1988 and visited her in Harare and Kwe Kwe in 1990.

It turns out she has been living in Kalgoorlie for 14 months and saw my name in the paper. She's visiting with her family tonight for a barbecue.

The other coincidence was the arrival in Kalgoorlie of Juliet's former obstetrician, Dr Pieter Mourik, on a locum visit for two weeks.

Juliet and I went to dinner last night at the Eastern Goldfields Medical Division of General Practice annual meeting and enjoyed a chat with Pieter and his wife. It was good to catch up with some news from North East Victoria. 

Tags: family, Kalgoorlie, news, PR, Victoria, work, Zimbabwe
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10 December 2005

Waugh’s African idea

Former Australian captain Steve Waugh made an interesting suggestion recently that a composite African team should be given Test status along the lines of the West Indies.

West Indies isn’t a country. It’s a collection of islands and nations from the same region that share an interest in cricket. Some of the nations have very small populations and could never expect to compete at test level in their own right.

Waugh was concerned for the future of cricket in Zimbabwe, and he commented that the game is making great strides in Kenya and Uganda.

He also mentioned that composite East African teams competed at World Cup level in the 1970s.

I think the idea has much merit. Zimbabwe is no longer competitive and the future doesn’t look bright.

It makes sense to establish a federation that includes Zimbabwe, Namibia, Kenya and Uganda, with a first-class competition involving their national teams.

Tags: Africa, Australia, Bright, cricket, world, Zimbabwe
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9 December 2005

Zimbabwe comes close to home

I’ve written a few times about Zimbabwe. Today, there’s a personal touch to the comments I make.

I visited Zimbabwe in 1991 when it was a prosperous happy country and before Mugabe went bananas.

My employer at the time, a Victorian farming newspaper, encouraged me to write some freelance articles about the agricultural situation while I was there. Read more »

Tags: children, email, family, finance, government, international, law, news, office, police, PR, school, Victoria, work, Zimbabwe
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