By Basildon Peta and Caroline Hooper-Box
In a bizarre twist to the cricket World Cup row involving Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's cabinet this week talked him out of forbidding the English and Australian cricket teams from entering Zimbabwe.
But in return for backing down and to quell his security fears that the arrival of multitudes of British and Australian cricketers, officials and fans would provide cover for British MI6 agents to unleash its operatives to carry out a plan to kill him, elaborate security measures have been agreed.
Authoritative Zimbabwe government sources said while debate raged on in England and Australia about whether the two countries' cricket teams should play in Zimbabwe, Mugabe himself also wanted the teams barred from his country.
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| Three agents will be assigned to each cricketer |
If Mugabe's view had carried it would have relieved those in England and Australia of a difficult decision amid mounting political pressure not to play in Harare and Bulawayo.
The sources said Mugabe strongly believed that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other "western detractors" were working with the opposition on a plot to kill him after their hopes that he would lose the March presidential election were dashed.
Mugabe, who has already banned Blair, Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth secretary-general, and all British government officials from his country, had told his cabinet that he did not want the English or the Australian team in Zimbabwe. But, sources said, in a series of meetings before Mugabe went on leave on Friday, the view of virtually all his ministers prevailed that the players and officials must be admitted.
The cabinet agreed the visitors would be subjected to stringent but surreptitious security measures, ranging from having their accommodation and telephone lines bugged to monitoring their movements.
It is understood that Mugabe's spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation, will be deployed in this role.
| 'Mugabe would rather not have these people here' |
At least three agents will be assigned to each British and Australian cricketer or official. The plan is that they will track the visitors, and watch meetings with people in Zimbabwe, especially with opposition representatives.
Mugabe apparently also wanted the England and Australian teams to play their matches in Bulawayo, away from the Harare cricket grounds across the road from his official residence. Sources said his desire to keep the teams out of Harare had not been pursued with cricket authorities in Zimbabwe.
Apart from the security fears, sources said, Mugabe also thought that prohibiting the cricket teams would be in retaliation for the sanctions imposed on him and his officials by the European Union, Australia, Britain and United States.
But his ministers felt that hosting the World Cup matches would be a major diplomatic coup for Zimbabwe, particularly after Blair and John Howard, the Australian premier, had made public their views on the matter. Both have urged their countries' teams not to play in Zimbabwe.
The hosting of the matches would also showcase Zimbabwe to the world as a normal country, the ministers argued. Reporters accredited to cover the matches would be ordered to focus on the cricket matches only.
"The fact is that Mugabe would rather not have these people here... he doesn't care if they don't come," said one official.
"He thinks that after humiliating Blair at the Earth summit and after the failure of the West to remove him from power, the focus is now on killing him. He thinks British intelligence are working full-time on that."
In another development, Peter Hain, Britain's secretary for Wales, and a former minister who was a powerful force in the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa, has argued for English cricket to "show some moral backbone" by pulling out.
"The odious Robert Mugabe regime would gain an enormous propaganda victory if the World Cup went ahead there," Hain said, "which is why it shouldn't."
"Listening to the views of cricketers and their officials reminds me of the 1960-70 era. They just wanted to play South African teams, regardless of the fact that blacks were denied by apartheid laws from doing so, that sport was a weapon of white South African tyranny, and that our sports boycotts of that era delivered what Nelson Mandela later confirmed was a mortal blow to apartheid.
"Although the Zimbabwe cricket visit raises different issues from apartheid in sport - because cricket there is multiracial - the common principle is that sports people cannot divorce themselves from life and the moral decisions of life."
Ngconde Balfour, the minister of sport, this week urged all the countries participating in the World Cup to support the International Cricket Council's (ICC) decision to play the six scheduled matches in Zimbabwe.
This position was "in line with government policy," said Graham Abrahams, a spokesperson for the minister.
"We don't determine those matches. All we are saying is that we need to abide by the decision of the ICC on this.
"There are major implications if the decision is not to play in Zimbabwe, for relations between South Africa and the rest of Africa, Pakistan and so on.
"Thirty-eight days down the road [until the matches start] is late for any person to think of switching position.
"Nobody is calling for a sports boycott against Zimbabwe - they are quite content to play against Zimbabwe in South Africa.
"As the Zimbabwe captain said, 'there are double standards against us'," Abrahams said.
"Our experience visiting Zimbabwe is that the team is essentially white, but the spectators are black.
"So are we saying hundreds of thousands of kids are starving and oppressed, but that we are taking away the little entertainment as well?"
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