Fast bowler Henry Olonga, who played 30 Test matches for Zimbabwe, knows the perils of not having a free Press.
For years, graphic stories of atrocities committed by despot Robert Mugabe’s henchmen were kept hidden. At the 2003 World Cup he and team-mate Andy Flower wore black armbands to protest Zimbabwe’s death of democracy – and were charged with treason.
Here is why he believes the UK Press must not be shackled when Lord Justice Leveson unveils the first part of his report into Press standards on Thursday.
By Henry Olonga
ZIMBABWE is a beautiful country with spectacular scenery and wildlife, and is rich enough in natural resources to be very wealthy. But years of corruption and violence have destroyed the economy and terrified the people. Even at junior school, I heard about things that disturbed me.
I was aware of government soldiers being deployed to find dissidents who were trying to destabilise Robert Mugabe’s regime in the area of Matabeleland, where I lived.
Originally, the soldiers and the dissidents had been fighting for the same cause — independence, which was achieved in 1980 — but soon there was slaughter on a staggering scale, a lot of it along tribal lines. Trouble is, we were all indoctrinated from a young age to believe the government line that Mugabe was a hero.
It is true he led the country’s liberation but they didn’t tell us the other side of the story about all manner of human rights abuses. It was covered up. I know some of the British Press ran stories that were critical of Mugabe.
For many years, the BBC was banned from Zimbabwe. Journalists had to try to enter the country posing as tourists. But nobody in Zimbabwe was able to read about the killings. From 1980 until the mid-1990s the only widely-circulated newspaper was a state-run mouthpiece.
The words were all lies about the supposedly fantastic achievements of ZANU-PF, Mugabe’s party. It was spin-doctoring on an epic scale. One or two underground papers sprang up and attempted to report some of the things the government wanted to cover up.
One, called the Independent, had to be printed in South Africa before being covertly distributed back in Zimbabwe. There were short-wave radio broadcasts in the rural regions where people who suffered abuse were able to speak out because the broadcasts somehow went under the government radar.
But there can be a price to pay if you want to expose a corrupt government. Many journalists were threatened and intimidated or forced to flee the country.
Mugabe was utterly ruthless — he still is. He has remained in power since 1980 and every election has had allegations of vote-rigging, violence and intimidation. These things were reported only by the foreign Press.
What does a free Press do? It keeps people accountable and it keeps governments transparent. Without a free Press, the expenses scandal in the UK would never have been exposed.
I had an inquisitive mind but discovered a lot of stuff about Zimbabwe only in my twenties because there were so few sources of information. The internet explosion and mobile phones helped.
Then satellite TV found its way into some of the wealthier homes. More information was available and people started to understand what a free Press meant. From the late 1990s, farms across the country were visited by government heavies — and their white owners and black employees were forcibly ejected.
The government wanted to re-distribute the land, essentially for themselves. Farm buildings were torched. I remember being on a cricket tour in the West Indies when the first white farmer was killed. His name was Martin Old. In 2000, I toured England but returned early to Zimbabwe because I was injured.
Stories about the farm invasions were getting worse. The whole infrastructure of the country — schools, hospitals and so on — was being damaged. The economy was in ruins. There was an HIV epidemic. Life expectancy was reducing. Zimbabwe was heading towards lawlessness and anarchy.
I was given a dossier in which around 1,000 victims of violence were interviewed. People were being shot, burned alive, starved to death. We also became involved in a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo which cost a fortune and sent Zimbabwe further into debt.
As a Christian with an increased political awakening, my conscience and sense of injustice were pricked. I was also a patron of an orphanage and it was clear the government had no interest in taking care of the most vulnerable. They were taking care of themselves all right, with bigger homes and cars.
This was the background to the black armband protest. Andy Flower called me to one side and said we had to do something. I think the plan originally was for the whole team to join the protest but in the end we decided to do it ourselves.
The World Cup in our home country gave an opportunity to make our voices heard on a global stage. We threw around a few ideas — maybe boycotting the event, for example — before settling on the black armband. We were amateurs in the protest game. We hadn’t done it before. We were cricketers.
But here was an opportunity to make a statement about bigger issues than hitting leather balls with pieces of wood. I received plenty of threats during that World Cup, then towards the end of the tournament policemen came to the ground and spoke to me. It was chilling.
I announced my retirement almost immediately, went underground for a month then moved to the UK. I haven’t considered going back to Zimbabwe since. I know much of what I experienced is very different to what has been discussed at the Leveson Inquiry.
But the same fundamental principle applies — a free Press is essential in any democracy.
Originally published in The Sun newspaper
