I have had the privilege of living in the 20th and 21st century, in an era where my people have migrated extensively. I have heard people remark that my people are like the Chinese, they are everywhere. I have had the opportunity to live through an era where xenophobia raised its ugly head on not only my people but many other people living in this South Africa where I live.
I have heard others saying to my face that women who come from my country are ugly and dirty. It surprised me because until then I hadn't noticed that I was any different from them.
I have listened to tall tales of how all witches and sorcerers came from my country and how my brothers were cheaters who used local women to get documentation. I have been there, that annoying remark when people tell you that they know a Zimbabwean, ... their hardworking poor maid is a teacher from Zimbabwe.
I have sat through conversations with very respectable people who knowing I was a Zimbabwean still went on to remark with a straight face that the crime rate in Gaborone has sky rocketed since "amaZimbabwe" started migrating. I have jokingly laughed these off and told them that they had better hold on to their wallets because I am a Zimbabwean.
I have facilitated discussions on xenophobia where I have been asked to talk to my brothers and sisters who have messed up border towns like Musina because of crime and prostitution.
I have also seen a woman from Limpopo, a province of South Africa, breakdown when a Zimbabwean colleague made a joke about how Limpopo is a province of Zimbabwe. Until then, I actually hadn't realised how bad it was to be associated with Zimbabwe. The poor lady cried...
All this however seems trivial when you think of the many people who lost their lives due to xenophobic violence in the country. I remember being afraid to even go to the shopping mall after seeing the images of "the burning man", Enersto, whose crime was purely that he was a Mozambican at the wrong place at the wrong time. He is just one of the many who also fell victim to this injustice....
But you know what, i have never felt anger towards these beings. All these things happening around me got me thinking. Could this be some form of karma? I mean I am one of those "born frees" and I am not too sure how my fathers treated the foreigner when the sun was shining on my country. My earliest memory of the treatment of a "foreigner" was during the land reform in my country. (I am arguing here that this could be part of the reason why those people lost their land because it was easy to identify them as non-native because of their skin colour so although they might have been citizens of my country, something about them stood out and made them appear foreign).
I am hoping there is someone out there with better memories of how we treated people from other countries.
So i ask my brothers and sisters to please take me back to the 80s when my Zimbabwe was young and her people were excited about independence. I want to know how my black government initially related with non-natives...
Take me back to my motherland then but put me in the shoes of a Mozambican refugee who had come to my country because of the civil strife in his country. You know those days when Matsanga and Alfonso Dlakama were always making regional news.... Put me in the shoes of that young boy who had walked many kms on an empty stomach and remind me what we used to call him, what kind of work he did and if we paid him a fare wage. Did we provide psycho social support to him, were we in any way kind to me?
Take me back to the Zimbabwe of the 80s, remind me of what we said about Zambia, Malawi, South Africa. What did we say of Zambia when they had hyperinflation and how did we accommodate them? How did we treat the South Africans in exile? Did we accommodate them with kindness? What did we call the migrant workers, were we kind to them?
I am hoping by answering these questions I will be able to appreciate why my people face so much stigma. A part of me tells me it could be the sins of the father catching up with the children....
If this is true, then this might be a good time to warn our current hosts all over the world of this thing called karma and how one day one of their children will find themselves in the shoes I am today and ask them how they treated the Zimbabwean :)
I've heard that Zimbabweans used to be xenophobic towards people from Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique. I've never heard of any violence perpetrated on said nationalities though.
ReplyDeleteGreat read. Got me thinking. The feeling of being other in a country that makes one feel acutely that they dont belong is mind-wrecking. That is why you would find that when it is possible and convenient one would rather not identify with their country or even ethnic group because of the label that is placed on being for example, Zimbabwean. Ndebele speaking Zimbabweans or Shangaan speaking Zimbabweans would rather claim to be from SA for example. Wearing an identity that covers them from being ostracised through the convenience of language. My memory of our treatment of Mozambiquans during the height of the Renamo insurgency are clear as I was in primary school during the 80s and grew up in the border town of Chiredzi and in a farming family. I remember that our families employed them to work on the farms and to herd cattle. I don't remember growing up there being any Mozambiquans who were mistreated nor was there ever a record of atrocities committed against them. There was a lot of mutual respect and we treated them as family. I think the ideology of employing violence against groups that are different from one's own that is largely seen in South Afriaca is a relic of bantustanist apartheid whereby when white supremacist Boers divided Xhosas against Zulus etc and had them fight against each other. Remember that in the 80s and 90s there was lots of Black against Black violence with Zulus against other groups etcetra and all being sponsored by the apartheid regime. Such downgrading of black life which was seen in the townships then was largely a norm then and yeah societies learn and normalise the abnormal through such unfortunate things. It is therefore not surprising that this only happens in South Africa and probably not elsewhere in Southern and Central Africa. That's my thinking.
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