Silencing the critics

Ozias Bvute, Zimbabwe Cricket's imposing managing director © Wisden

At the end of last week Cricinfo received an email from Zimbabwe Cricket advising us that it was no longer prepared to have any communication with us and would not be answering any media queries. "Really?" said a colleague when I told him. "You mean they have been for the last two years?"

In essence, ZC is unhappy with the articles we have run which have been critical of it and the way it has run the game. "We have been hard pressed to see the two sides to every story in your recent articles on Zimbabwe," Lovemore Banda, the media manager, wrote. "You will agree that it is an exercise in futility for us to be responding to enquiries."

In fairness, we have run articles before the board has replied to queries. Often that has been because we have been kept waiting - regularly more than a week, sometimes two or three - or have been ignored altogether. We have also declined on occasion to scrap stories just because they have been labelled as rubbish by the board. We have been accused of hidden agendas and lies, and yet the passage of time has shown almost everything we have written to be accurate ... and when we have found inaccuracies, they have been corrected.

The real issue here is that Zimbabwe Cricket operates in a country where there is almost no free speech, and what independent thought exists is regularly and brutally suppressed. There are almost no foreign journalists left operating inside Zimbabwe, and new laws passed earlier in the month make reporting from there without government-approved accreditation, or harbouring anyone who does, punishable with two years in prison.

Even operating within the rules is nigh on impossible. In February, Cricinfo attempted to send a reporter to cover the Bangladesh one-day series. The fee for even applying for accreditation was US$600. The authorities delayed so long that by the time we actually heard back from them, the series was more than half over. It was an all-too-familiar policy of obstruction. Back in 2004 Mihir Bose, a well-respected journalist working for The Daily Telegraph, was deported and in the UK parliament Labour MP Kate Hoey noted that he "was not given the slightest bit of support by the Zimbabwe board".

Zimbabwe Cricket has almost no critics at home, mainly because the government has shut down all but two privately-owned weekly newspapers and there is no independent electronic media. The main newspaper, The Herald, is a propaganda sheet that would make the old Soviet Pravda blush with embarrassment. A cursory glance at its headlines underlines that.

In 2005, Ozias Bvute, the board's MD, called Cricinfo and demanded to know the whereabouts of Steven Price, the Harare-based journalist who continues to defy the authorities and file reports for us. When we refused, Bvute said that we were operating outside the law as we were using unapproved contributors. "Why will you not tell me his whereabouts," Bvute asked. "What has he got to be afraid of." If it wasn't so chilling it would almost be funny.

The way we were: Simon King, Cricinfo's then CEO, presents a cheque to Zimbabwe Cricket Union officials in 2000 © Cricinfo

Last week, a senior foreign reporter for a major Eropean newspaper told me that the government had issued security warnings against the few foreign journalists left in the country, and that the remaining handful were either getting out or lying low. Photographers and cameramen have been attacked by police, and earlier this month a retired journalist who spoke out was abducted from his home and his mutilated body was found a few days later 40 km north of Harare.

Many people who have contributed to Cricinfo in the past have stopped, either because they are frightened or, in some instances, because they have been directly threatened.

So, Zimbabwe Cricket is able to carry on, and the allegations by stakeholders of gross mismanagement of finances and administration go almost unreported. The decision to shun Cricinfo is another attempt to stifle any criticism.

"There is no transparency, no observation of the constitution and no accountability," a former provincial chairman said this week. "They want to hide issues and do not allow any debate and resent anybody raising any issues or questioning them."

Last year, Peter Chingoka, the board's chairman, accused Cricinfo of being "mired in skulduggery". He added, in a letter which he sent to all members of the ICC executive in a clear bid to undermine the credibility of our coverage of his board's activities: "The line between hearsay and credible information is constantly erased and re-drawn, as the two are freely interchanged ... you do not hesitate to cultivate and flaunt your contacts, jealously guarding their identities in the process."

The relationship wasn't always so fractious. In 2000, Cricinfo donated Zim$5 million (then about US$150,000) to the then Zimbabwe Cricket Union to help with the development of the game in the country. Although Chingoka remains at the helm, almost everyone who was associated with the board back then has disappeared, increasingly replaced with often hand-picked and almost universally compliant appointees.

One day, the truth will all come out. Meanwhile, it is more important than ever for people like Steven Price to continue to file reports and to tell the world - and the executive board of the ICC which continues to adopt a policy of looking the other way - what is really happening.

Read in App

Elevate your reading experience on ESPNcricinfo App.

Download App Now