Vast Moneys Involved

The “asphyxiation to death by manual strangulation” by persons yet unknown of Pakistan’s cricket coach Bob Woolmer has been an occasion for lots of pietistic tributes to the dead man’s virtues, and bravado that the tournament would go on come what may. However, the solemn notices are rather coy about some of the more interesting aspects of the dead man’s professional career.

One, by taking part in the so-called rebel tours of South Africa in the 1980s Bob Woolmer was very much part of the initiatives that sought to break the sanctions against apartheid. The ideas and ideologies involved in that confrontation are not dead, despite the induced feel-good factor about the “New South Africa”; and the broader phenomenon of a universally benevolent globalised, post-ideology and post-end of history world, promising a seamless and linear economic growth and equitable distribution of the fruits of such growth.