Why are we backing regime change in Baghdad but not in Harare?

At the British High Commission in Harare, the going rate for a visa to get the hell out of that indiscriminately violent asylum whose government we helped to install is 79,200 Zimbabwean dollars. That's not far short of £1,000.

The official rate for a British visa across the rest of the world — i.e,, similarly awful, despotic, lawless yet totalitarian, economically suicidal basket cases like Sierra Leone, Somalia and, yes, Iraq — is rather less than this. It's £36.

How come the somewhat glaring discrepancy? Simple. The British government uses the illegal black-market exchange rate in Zimbabwe, of Z$2,200 to the pound, as opposed to the official exchange rate of Z$85 to the pound.

Still, you have to say, this little bit of financial and political chicanery is doing the job. It's keeping Zimbabwean blacks out of Britain, which was, presumably, the intention. If you're black and Zimbabwean and not unemployed, or under house arrest or in prison or on the run, then you just might earn £1,000 within a few years, if you're very lucky. Maybe, if you skimped on the luxuries and put aside £50 per year for the visa, then you'd arrive at Heathrow by the time Clare Short actually does resign over something. Round about 2025.

If you're white, you might be able to scrape the money together a bit more quickly, white Zimbabweans being altogether more affluent — which is not to diminish the hell that they've been through. Thing is, if you're black, it's different. It's a lot worse and, paradoxically, you have more to lose.

And so we have a situation where our arms are opened to the Muslim madmen of the Maghreb, Algerian nutters laden with ricin, vvhacko Yemenis, estranged Egyptians, and very angry Afghans, Romanians and Albanians who will be happy to wash your car windows at a set of traffic lights or, failing that, nick your car. But persecuted and committed democrats from a country which we owned and then meddled in and of which we have now, apparently, washed our hands can go hang. Metaphorically, of course. But, unfortunately, literally also.

You may remember the name Henry Khaaba Olonga, Henry is the Zambianborn but naturalised Zimbabwean fast bowler, the first black man to play for his adopted country. He's an OK cricketer, Henry, good enough at least to play the game at World Cup standard, which in fact is what he was doing earlier this month.

Henry and his team-mate Andy Flower, a white man, did a brilliant and very brave thing in the World Cup. They played their first game wearing black armbands to signify the death of democracy in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government went berserk; the two were told to drop the stunt for the next game, which, obediently enough, they did. They wore white armbands instead, Andy Flower, the best cricketer Zimbabwe has ever had, later reluctantly resigned from the side under pressure. He was 34 and had enjoyed, as they say, a good innings. But it was brave of him to make that stand, and pretty rare in the selfish, monomaniacal world of professional sport.

For Henry things were even worse. He was dropped to twelfth man in the next match. Then he was sacked by the Takashinga Cricket Club, which was the club side for which he played and through which he earned his living.

Then the death threats started, mainly via email. Henry was told to clear off. Get out of the country. Come back and you'll be tried and hanged for treason. Or maybe just shot.

So Henry, sensibly, left and made his way surreptitiously to South Africa, which is where he is now. Did he get a hero's welcome in the democratic republic of South Africa? Did he hell. The African National Congress has just described him as being 'deluded' and 'insulting'. This is because Henry is staying in hiding in South Africa, not entirely trusting the government there to keep his whereabouts a secret from the barking mad Mugabe. He thinks the ANC is apt to act as an apologist for Zanu from time to time. Surely not.

Anyway, the South Africans don't want him, either.

Henry's dad, Dr John Olonga, who lives in Bulawayo, doesn't know if he'll ever see his son again. I spoke to him this week, just after he'd received a call from Henry. The phone rang; it was his son calling from a secret number. They spoke briefly and then he was gone.

'He's never coming back to Zimbabwe. It's just become too dangerous for him,' said Dr Olonga. 'The threats started and then they became cumulative. It was the progressive effect of the threats which drove him away. You know,' he adds, 'I wouldn't have had the courage to do what my son did. I really wouldn't have had the courage.'

Dr Olonga might start to worry about his own safety soon. 'The difference is,' he says, 'I'm not a citizen like Henry is. I'll stay here and keep working until someone tells me to get out and then, I suppose, I'll get out.'

Imagine it. A month or so ago Henry Olonga was a cricketer at the very top of his profession. One act of bravery and defiance later and he is deprived of his means of earning a living, effectively deprived of his home, penniless, on the run, unwanted, Let's hope he comes here and let's hope, even more, that when he does, he is given a hero's welcome.

If you were to compile a roster of countries that require what the Americans have taken to calling a 'regime change', where would Zimbabwe come on your list? First? Second? In what sense, you might well ask, is Mugabe possibly less despotic, less deranged and less of a threat to his own people than Saddam Hussein? Has he not wreaked more havoc, murdered as many people, and wrecked his country into the bargain? And do we not, for good, recent, historical reasons, have a rather greater obligation to deal with Zimbabwe than with Iraq?

I suppose he has no oil, big Bob, nor has he enraged and humiliated the father of the current President of the United States, so far as I am aware. Mugabe has been offered succour by the French, I suppose — so there are some international, geopolitical similarities.

But we seem disinclined to do anything about Zimbabwe, except to whinny impotently from the sidelines and then, when nobody's looking, make it as difficult as possible for the country's beleaguered black citizens to make their way to Britain. We cheer Henry Olonga and Andy Flower for their acts of bravery and then, a month or so later, put them out of our minds. As the tanks line up on the northern Kuwaiti border, it's this, rather than unconditional pacifism, which makes me wonder if we're doing the right thing; if we have our priorities right. Who will sort out Zimbabwe? And when?