KEY POINTS:
It was in 1977 that the Commonwealth of Nations, at a meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, agreed to discourage sporting ties with South Africa as part of their support for an international campaign against racism.
You would've thought that such an extraordinary step, and certainly its resounding success in
hastening change in South Africa, might have served as a lesson for future generations - but apparently not.
Just 30 years on, as South Africa's new leaders speak of the influence of the Gleneagles sporting boycott, today's generation prefer to embrace deception and farce to avoid the hard decisions over Zimbabwe.
The whole sorry business plunged to new depths yesterday when the Australian Government were effectively forced to ban their national body from sending a team to Zimbabwe in September, in order to save it from millions of dollars in fines.
As the International Cricket Council rules stands, a national board is liable for fines totalling more than US$2 million ($2.72 million) as well as lost financial opportunities (such as television revenue), if it bails out of a tour for reasons other than safety and security. However, one of the few loopholes in the process allows an exemption for any team banned from touring by their sovereign government, a clause that was necessitated by India and Pakistan's stand-off during the 1980s and 1990s.
Hence John Howard's expedient collusion with Cricket Australia yesterday, an effort that mimicked Helen Clark's decision to ban the incoming Zimbabwe tour of 2005-06, and continued one of international cricket's most shameful charades.
Neither Prime Minister wanted to take such a cavalier approach to their citizens' freedom of movement but eventually succumbed, reasoning that separation with Zimbabwe was more important than the semantics; that the end justified the means.
And this is where the ICC's stance of not wanting to interfere in member countries' political and domestic matters starts to wear a bit thin.
Rather than not being an influence, the world body is forcing freedom-loving countries such as New Zealand and Australia to take draconian steps to save their cricket administrations from significant losses.
True, the ICC's task is nothing to envy. Its attempt to remain non-judgmental about international politics is utterly understandable, albeit a tad futile.
Where is it expected to draw the line? Should it stop at Zimbabwe, or should it also apply sanctions against Pakistan which, after all, is run by the champion of a military coup? And what about Sri Lanka's human rights' record against the Tamils?
But Zimbabwe is now beyond the pale, just as South Africa became an unacceptable companion of all freedom-loving countries in the late 1970s and 1980s.
When the horrifically oppressed Zimbabweans can't access electricity let alone pay for it, the idea of playing sport there is an obscenity; a blatant display of apathy in the face of some of the world's most desperate souls.
It's now beyond the reach of cricket authorities, it's a matter for international leaders - and the sooner they can agree on something that sidelines Mugabe on a sporting level until his people are freed, the better.
This is no time for games.
Why can't we have an international sports-wide boycott of Zimbabwe? Why should we allow a tyrant to play us off, country against country, culture against culture, until the core of the issue - Mugabe's sickening regime - is lost in the bickering?
Hopefully someone will soon take a stand and get organised, so that sporting organisations around the world don't have to, in an effort to avoid international condemnation, ask their own governments to cancel their tours.
If we could be so up front about it 30 years ago, you'd think we could find a way to stand together once more.
