Editorial: Government must act to stop cricket tour

Let's not kid ourselves that cancelling New Zealand's scheduled cricket tour of Zimbabwe would help the desperate and despairing people of that country. It would not. This is not a situation akin to apartheid-era South Africa. But that is no reason to blithely proceed with the tour. New Zealand, in a small way, has the opportunity to reinforce Zimbabwe's pariah status, while denouncing yet again President Robert Mugabe's flouting of human rights and democratic principles. It should take it.

At the moment, thanks to an all-pervasive timidity, the tour is still on course to start in August. The Government says it would prefer the Black Caps stayed at home, but will not tell New Zealand Cricket to cancel the exercise. Cricket's administrators, for their part, seem preoccupied with player safety and the US$2 million penalty for calling off the tour without justification.

New Zealand Cricket's attitude is reasonably understandable. Sports bodies would invite only a succession of headaches if they were to use standards of Government as the basis for their international commitments. In an ideal world, Governments, also, would not be in the business of dictating to national sporting associations. Preventing sports people from playing on the international stage, or of fulfilling contractual obligations, is no trifling matter. Nonetheless, it most properly falls to Governments, either individually or through international agreements, to impose such sanctions when they think it is necessary. Any other course is simply passing the buck.

Zimbabwe is such a circumstance, particularly because Government intervention also offers the way around the financial penalty facing New Zealand Cricket. International Cricket Council regulations stipulate that, among other reasons, a tour can be abandoned without penalty on the basis of "any action taken by a Government or public authority of any kind".

Furthermore, the game's governors stated last year that "it is the right of Governments to take actions, including the imposition of sporting sanctions, which they consider to be in their national interest".

Clearly, ICC policy offers the basis for the Government and New Zealand Cricket to begin talks, and take legal advice, with a view to calling off the tour. In the end, it may well require an instruction from the Beehive. That is not an especially palatable prospect for the Government, given a looming election and the apparent tightness of the contest. It might, however, be surprised by the small number of feathers ruffled by such intervention.

The dictum that sport and politics should not mix has long been buried. And the politics in this case involve a tragedy of major dimension, and the succour provided by a tour of farcical proportions.

New Zealand Cricket is proposing that the Black Caps have no contact with Zimbabwean authorities. Such a snub has been the device of choice for England's cricketers. But it is no answer. At best, it suggests the cricketers are unthinking, unseeing individuals who are happy to play in a vacuum. At worst, it is a charade that involves a pathetic denial of the plight of black and white Zimbabweans.

New Zealand Cricket must demand stronger direction from the Foreign Affairs Minister. It has been placed in an invidious position, but not one devoid of an acceptable exit. The Government, clearly, would prefer not to have to act. It knows Mugabe is impervious to international opinion, and that, whatever it does, his despoilation of Zimbabwe will continue. But act it must. To do nothing would add to the tragedy.