This article appeared in the newspapers which I fully support
Soccer is growing apace Down Under and the stadiums can be ready in time to host its most prestigious competition — an event that far surpasses cricket’s current version, which has been spoilt by long-windedness and prices fixed for a supposed influx of westerners and not for the local market. Cricket has been overtaken by greed and frankly is not worth bothering about.
Some argue that sport and politics must be kept apart. Boycotts have become another weapon in the political armoury. However the ANC will not complain about them. Indeed they argued strongly in favour of them whilst they and the PAC and the progressives and the world community were trying to bring apartheid to its knees. Presented with the current barbarism in Zimbabwe they will surely agree that sporting links must be broken. But why stop with Zimbabwe? Why not widen responsibility to those helping Mugabe retain power?
President Mbeki and his cohorts must accept some of the blame for a viciousness designed to keep a sick and spiteful old man in power, and the nasty CIO in clover, but presented under a thin veneer of anti-colonial conduct. Doubtless our leader is contemplating some distant vision of an African renaissance but meanwhile millions are dying or fleeing and a fine country is turning into a cesspit.
Mugabe has run rings round his younger ally yet South Africa’s influence is apparent. Was not the date of Mugabe’s rigged re-election changed partly because the original date would have clashed with the World Cup? It is inconceivable that a soccer tournament can be played with such wickedness unfolding a short distance away, on the watch of the very nation that has been given the honour of staging the event.
Mbeki’s discreet diplomacy has been a devastating failure. Overseas he is regarded as an apologist for his friend in Harare, and his reputation has not survived this association. The common person came to him and was met with aristocratic disdain. It is not enough to say that Zimbabwe’s pain is shared.
No, the only course of action available to the rest of the world is to take the World Cup away from South Africa. Otherwise the grim prospect will be faced of Zimbabweans being forced back across Beit Bridge to face further savagery even as Brazil and France play the beautiful game in a well-furnished stadium. It is situation intolerable to those who care more about humanity than political theory, those who refuse to be misled by silver tongues and demagoguery. It is a state of affairs inconceivable to those who care about sport
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