Great Article on Andy Flower in the Times

Dark clouds of brutality that changed Andy Flower’s life

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/cri ... 183089.ece

By Matthew Syed – October 4 2011 12:01AM

Perhaps it is unfair to begin a story about a man as inspirational as Andy Flower with the observation that he was once racist in his outlook.

Flower is lauded not merely as an outstanding coach and former player, but for the bravery of his stand against Robert Mugabe, wearing a black armband

to mourn the death of democracy in Zimbabwe.

But to understand the curious, complex and revelatory journey of this remarkable man, as well as the parallel journey of the nation he still calls

home, we must rewind to his upbringing, first in South Africa and then his cherished Zimbabwe.

It was a time when Nelson Mandela was an inhabitant of Robben Island and when the colonialist assumptions of Ian Smith held sway in what was then

Rhodesia.

“It is amazing how easily racist ideology is absorbed by young people,” he says, shaking his head, when we meet at Lord’s. “I lived in South Africa

until the age of 10 and then moved to Rhodesia while civil war was still raging. The idea of whites as superior to blacks was not just publicly

stated, but connived at in all sorts of subtle ways in both nations.

“It is a form of indoctrination because you just don’t realise how your own ideas and assumptions have been coloured by what you are told and the norms

of the culture you are living in. It was only when I got to my late teens and early twenties that I first started to ask the question: ‘What the hell

am I thinking here?’ My views were very backward, which is deeply embarrassing to admit today.”

The initial trigger for Flower’s racial awakening was a trip to England as an 18-year-old. A principled young man who had been brought up in a

Christian household, Flower was given a priceless but daunting opportunity to glimpse his own culture through the eyes of outsiders. It left him

confused and, in some ways, dazed.

“I had really been looking forward to the tour of England,” he says. “We were a casual cricket team called the Stragglers and I was billeted with a lovely family in Esher. They had a son of my age and I remember having a discussion with him about interracial relationships. I was truly astonished when he said that he would contemplate having a non-white girlfriend. We argued for hours one night about it. I began to realise something was deeply

wrong with my beliefs.

“A year or so later I went to play cricket at Heywood Cricket Club in

Manchester. The local professional was John Abrahams, who comes from a Cape

Coloured background. He and his family were heavily involved with the club.

It should have been easy to see them for what they were: kind, decent and

rather magnificent people. But I had these powerful and conflicting emotions

going on, and hardcore beliefs to breakdown. It took time.”

Flower’s candour is deeply moving, but it also speaks volumes about his

character. The willingness for self-examination, to ask brutal and searching

questions, has not only defined his moral and political journey, but also

his approach to sport.

As he puts it: “Unless you are honest in a way that is sometimes

uncomfortable, you cannot learn from your mistakes. That is something I have

tried to inculcate in every England player, because it applies as much to

sport as to life.”

But even as Flower was re-evaluating his deepest beliefs, his nation was

gradually spiralling out of control. Robert Mugabe, who had started out as

President amid such high hopes of reconciliation, had created nothing less

than a gangster state. It was not just administrative incompetence that

brought Zimbabwe to its knees, but the use of state-sanctioned terror.

By 2003, extrajudicial punishment, endemic corruption and electoral

intimidation — to put it simply, the full horrors of de facto totalitarian

rule — were firmly established in Zimbabwe. Mugabe had lost all inhibition,

using torture and violence indiscriminately. With society nearing total

breakdown, and with starvation looming in various communities, the political

establishment turned its attention to the World Cup of 2003 as a new

opportunity to shore up its flagging legitimacy.

And it was at this point that Flower, once again, found himself questioning

many of the deepest assumptions of the culture he lived in. “Human rights

abuses had been occurring in Zimbabwe for quite a while,” he says. “But you

just don’t see things clearly when you are embedded in a system. You just

accept it as what happens to a nation in transition. You are normalised into

what is happening.

“But I was jogged out of my complacency in 2003 by two things happening

simultaneously. A friend of mine [called Nigel Hough], who had played

cricket for Zimbabwe, phoned me up one day to say that he had had his land

taken off him. He drove me out to his farm to show me what had happened. It

was a once-thriving enterprise that supported the community, had a clinic

and a school, and employed several hundred people in the area.

“Now, it was rack and ruin. No one was using the land, no one was generating

income and nobody was supporting those families. It was horrendous to see.

He said: ‘Look at what is happening in this country. You have a moral

obligation to highlight this.’ Once he had planted that seed, I thought:

‘Yes we do.’

“On the same day I opened a newspaper — it was the only independent paper at

the time and was constantly harried by the Government. On the inside page

was an article about an MP who had been arrested and tortured in police

custody. It was a tiny article, hardly any space at all. And suddenly I was

struck, as if for the first time, by the sheer horror of living in a nation

where torture is so widespread it does not even make front page news.”

But if Flower had to search deep inside to confront his own racial

assumptions as a teenager, he knew that he would have to confront Mugabe in

more public fashion. Hough suggested a full boycott of the World Cup, but

Flower felt uneasy with the idea of pressuring younger players to join a

protest that would effectively end their careers.

So, along with Henry Olonga, the first black man to play for Zimbabwe, he

hatched the plan for the two of them to wear black armbands.

“I asked Henry to a meeting to put to him the idea of taking a stand,”

Flower says. “Henry’s involvement was vital, and it didn’t take him long to

realise it was the right thing to do. Henry is deeply principled and his

willingness to join in gave the protest moral authority. A protest by a

white man alone would have been dismissed as a colonialist gimmick. But with

one black and one white, it told the story that this was not about race, but

about terror and brutality.”

The dangers were obvious, but neither man flinched from what they had come

to believe was their duty. “We took advice from security people who told us

that we would be safe during the tournament — because we were in the public

eye — but not afterwards,” Flower says.

“The modus operandi of the regime was to involve you in a car crash or to

stab you during a fake mugging. They told us to get out as soon as the

competition was over.”

Flower and Olonga’s historic stand took place on February 10, 2003, in the

opening match against Namibia. They had kept news of the protest to a small

coterie of trusted friends to ensure that it was not railroaded by the

regime. Only at 9.30am on the morning of the match, with the teams about to

take the field, did the world find out what was about to take place via a

prepared statement. Images of the protest made front pages in almost every

continent.

“We were eventually knocked out of the competition in a match in South

Africa,” Flower says. “Henry did not go back to Zimbabwe, he was too

worried. He had already received death threats. I went back for three days

to clear up a few things and then left for good. My family had already moved

to England before the World Cup started. I haven’t been back since.”

Flower’s reputation as one of the outstanding coaches in sport today, a man

who inspires loyalty and admiration from his players and staff, is

unequivocally a consequence of the journey he has taken and the lessons he

has learnt. A young man who, by his own admission, lacked empathy and

perspective, he has blossomed into a leader who combines moral seriousness

with deep humanity.

It is no coincidence that under his leadership, England players have been

put through programmes designed to challenge their perspective. The two-day

trip to Flanders, to visit war graves and attend a memorial service, is one

of many examples.

“We have tried to grow leaders within our unit and that means broadening

perspectives and challenging assumptions,” Flower says. “It is only when we

are forced to look beyond ourselves that we really learn.”

When I ask Flower whether he has ever wondered if cricket is rather a

trivial thing to devote one’s life to, he nods slowly before tackling the

question head on. “I feel very privileged to be in this job,” he says. “But

I know that cricket is not like devoting one’s life to charity. Cricket may

be fun, but it is not about saving lives or making the world a better

place.”

But for the first time in the interview he is mistaken. Along with Olonga,

he did use cricket to make the world a better place. And those of us who

witnessed their dignified and chastening protest in Harare will not forget

it.