But the tidal wave has come
in the past two decades of the crisis.
Zimbabwe is known for its extreme
figures and statistics, led by the world’s
oldest president, at 93. Until the jetti-
soning of the local currency in 2009, the
country had an inflation rate that saw
its reserve bank printing billion-dollar
and trillion-dollar notes, which are now
valuable collectors’ items. Perhapsthe most alarming statistic now is the
skyrocketing unemployment rate. On
May Day this year, Zimbabwe’s largest
labour organisation, the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions, stated that
90% of the working population was
jobless – that is, they cannot find jobs
in the formal sector.
With its more than 15 universities
churning out about 30,000 graduatesa year into a shrinking economy,
Zimbabweans face some choices. You
can either take a casual job – many go
into cross-border trading, but most
go into farming. Or you can leave the
country to find more secure work else-
where. There is a direct link between
the country’s vertiginous economic
decline and the exponential growth
of its diaspora.W
hat if you could actually
get rid of the whole notion
of national diasporas as
we know it? If Elon Musk succeeds
in his goal of sending a million humans
to Mars, he will create the first inter-
planetary diaspora. Quite a turnaround
for a kid who remembers being bullied
in schools in Pretoria, South Africa, and
who moved to Canada when he was 17.
The rest of his story is better known:
earning billions after starting the
company that eventually became
Paypal, launching the Tesla electric
car company, and, of course, SpaceX,
which has a $5.7bn contract with
NASA to resupply the International
Space Station, and which is developingthe Mars mission. By the end of
August, SpaceX hopes to launch its
Falcon Heavy rocket, which its says
will fly two paying passengers around
the moon in 2018.
Throughout history, diasporans
have brought crucial capital and skills
back to their home economies.
The Chinese economy owes its stellar
take-off in the 1990s to the legions
of Hong Kong investors who married
their sense of home to their newly-
minted millions. They started pouring
money over the border into the tiny
backwater fishing village of Shenzen,
seeding what was to become the huge
factory cities on which China forged
its reputation as workbench of the world.Musk appears happy in Los Angeles
for now, but his business may make
an appearance on the continent. Tesla
autos already has an office in South
Africa. Musk is believed to be
pondering a ‘gigafactory’ in Cape
Town to build the Tesla Powerwall,
a home-sized battery unit.
Currently, the Italian electricity utility
Enel, which has already built renewable
power plants in South Africa, is testing
the Powerwall with customers in Cape
Town. The kit costs about $10,000, and
attaches to solar panels, with the whole
thing managed through your television.
These early models are meant to
pay for themselves in eight years,
and expected to last for two decades.ELONMUSKSouth Africa/US, entrepreneurFromCapeCanaveral
toCapeTown
REFUGIO RUIZ/AP/SIPA26 FRONTLINE| DIASPORA DYNAMO