On Wednesday 12th May 2004, Kate Hoey MP (lab.) hosted a press conference at The House of Commons for Zimbabwean MP Trudy Stevenson and Yvonne Mahlunge of the MDC National Executive Committee to deliver a special message from Zimbabwe. Michael Ancram MP (con.) also attended.

The message I bring from the democratic movement in Zimbabwe - and more specifically from Morgan Tsvangirai, President of the Movement for Democratic Change - is that England should NOT go to Zimbabwe to play cricket later this year. We call on the England & Wales Cricket Board and all other members of the ICC to suspend sporting links with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU) - particularly Australia in view of their plans to tour in the near future.

Robert Mugabe, a brutal dictator, is the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union. This makes the position of maintaining links with the ZCU different from dealing with other sports and businesses in Zimbabwe. The target of the boycott is Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF and its tentacles of power . His political commissars within the ZCU have directed that team selection should be along both ethnic and political lines. Any team that plays cricket against such a side will find itself complicit in making a political statement of approval for those odious policies. In the context of cricket in Zimbabwe today it is utterly disingenuous to pretend that there is no politics in sport.

Cricket is a microcosm of the way in which the Zanu PF seeks to impose its control on every facet of life in Zimbabwe - through patronage, bribery, violence, rape and state-sponsored murder. The boycott against apartheid South Africa was one of the tools of non-violence in the struggle towards the new democratic South Africa. The people of Zimbabwe stood shoulder to shoulder with the people of South Africa in that struggle for freedom. Do not abandon us now in our hour of desperate need.

<Trudy Stevenson MP, for Harare North, of the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Trudy was a founder member of the MDC and was elected on to its National Executive, on which she is National Secretary for Research and Policy.

Trudy personally delivered the message from Morgan Tsvangirai to cricket officials at ECB and ICC offices at Lords on Thursday 13th May 2004. Trudy pictured here with one foot on the spectacular pitch said “Chinja! here we are at Lords Cricket Ground. The most historic cricket ground in the world”.

The message Morgan Tsvangirai gave me on Thursday evening was this:

No truly sporting nation should allow itself to be instrumental in bringing the game of cricket into disrepute by playing a second or third-rate team and pretend it believes it is playing the best players in a national team. Neither should any national team pretend that there is no politics in sport. Mugabe is the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, and team selection has been shown very clearly to be along both ethnic and politics involved in playing cricket in or against Zimbabwe? The boycott against apartheid South Africa was one among many tactics which finally led to the new democratic South Africa, long as it took - why not use the same tactic for Zimbabwe? The UK boycotted the Moscow Olympics - was that not a political stance?

It is our view that, since cricket is largely a Commonwealth game, Commonwealth nations should be lobbied to support the boycott and to come together as members of ICC to tell the ICC board to endorse the boycott. This will take pressure off individual teams and nations, and will respond to the ICC’s stance that “We simply do what our members tell us to do”. Members, tell the ICC that Zimbabwe must be boycotted until the game of cricket there has been put back on a proper sports footing and until Mugabe’s regime allows its sportsmen and women the same rights as those enjoyed in the rest of the democratic world.

I bring this message to you today, as a representative of the authentic and democratically expressed will of the people of Zimbabwe. We are denied free speech and access to the media in our own country. Thank you for being our voice and taking our message to the world.

Trudy Stevenson MP, Secretary for Policy and Research, MDC > www.geocities.com/hear_tsvangirai_message

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