The Africa Report — July-August 2017

I

n 2009, I found myself in Galway, a

lively city with a strong bohemian

vibe on Ireland’s west coast. It was not

a place in which I expected to run into

Zimbabweans. Yet there was Martha,

a mental health nurse who lived there

withherfamilyandwasasdelightedasI

wastoencounterafellowZimbabwean.

Since then, I have visited more than

30 cities on four continents. In just

about every city, whether Auckland

or Los Angeles, Helsinki or Munich,

Geneva or Melbourne, I have met

Zimbabweans who have found new

homes to form one of Africa’s largest

diasporapopulations.TheZimbabwean

diaspora covers the spectrum, from

hospital workers like Martha to UK-

based actress Thandie Newton, cham-

pion boxer Dereck Chisora and writer

Brian Chikwava.

Itwasverydifferentin1994,whenIleft

Zimbabweasa23-year-oldpostgraduate

law student. The diaspora was a trick-

le, but leaving the country was part of

being Zimbabwean. Migrant labour at

all levels, outgoing and inward-bound,

was key to the country’s development.

But leaving also meant returning.

Migration experts note Zimbabwe’s

particularity: a country to which other

Africans came to find work, and which

its own citizens left, also to find work.

Sometimes the trickle of leavers

turned into waves. In the 1960s and

1970s, tens of thousands of miners

recruited by the Witwatersrand Native

Labour Association left Zimbabwe

and neighbouring states to work in

the mines of South Africa, a human

traffic that is hauntingly evokedin Hugh

Masekela’s songStimela.

Younger Zimbabweans also left to

study abroad. Most of this first wave

returned home. The mine workers

never wanted to settle in South Africa.

At independence in 1980, the erstwhile

students used their newly acquired

education and technical skills to find

good positions in the civil service and

the professions.

THE WHEN-WES

As one group returned, another left.

The 1980s saw the second small wave of

the diaspora leaving the country, never

to return. These were the disaffected

white Rhodesians, uneasy about what

independence meant. They earned the

nickname ‘The When-Wes’ because

their conversations were peppered with

nostalgia-soaked observations begin-

ning: “When we were in Rhodesia ...”

The Gukurahundi massacres,

in which some 20,000 people in

Matabeleland perished in the mid-

1980s, created another wave of

diasporans. This wave washed up over

the southern border, where tens of

thousands of Zimbabweans, predomi-

nantly Ndebele speakers, blended into

the South African landscape.

Half-lives, nostalgia and hope

ByPetina Gappahin Berlin

WRITER PICTURES/LEEMAGE

3

USA

13.4%

4

New Zealand

9.5%

5

Germany

6%

Top 5 overseas

destinations of South

African emigrants

(between 2000 and 2016)

2

United Kingdom

25%

20 million

11,787

South Africa

1

Australia

26%

Contributions to home economy

(Top 10 remittance recipients % GDP)

29.6%

Liberia

($0.6bn)

6.4%

Togo

($0.2bn)

4.6%

Nigeria

($19bn)

Kenya

($1.7bn)

Madagascar

($0.4bn)

Ethiopia

($0.6bn)

South

Africa

($0.7bn)

Uganda

($1.1bn)

5.7%

Mali

($0.8bn)

13.5%

Senegal

($2bn)

13%

Cabo Verde

($0.2bn)

20.4%

Gambia

($0.2bn)

17.5%

Lesotho

($0.2bn)

4.8%

Ghana

($2bn) Comoros21.2%

($0.2bn)

Nigerian

diaspora

remittances

2015

2016

$20.8bn

$35bn

Estimated number of

people from the Middle

East and North Africa

living abroad.

Number of doctors from

sub-Saharan Africa

working in the United

States – more than

in 34 African countries

combined.

SOURCE: WORLD BANK SOURCE: WORLD BANK

SOURCE: STATSSA

SOURCE: NIGERIA GOVERNMENT,GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE PARTNERSHIPON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

SOURCE: TANKWANCHI, VERMUND, AND PERKINS, 2015

24 FRONTLINE| DIASPORA DYNAMO