BZS, Chair’s Annual Report, October 2007

I would like to begin this Report by paying tribute to various members of the Executive Committee, beginning with our President, Terence Ranger, who is suffering from poor health and cannot be with us today. Terry continues to provide a focal point and a moral compass for the Society and we all send our wishes for successful surgery and a steady recovery. I must also express fulsome thanks to Frances Chinemana, who has worked hard for many years as the Minutes and Correspondence Secretary for the Society, and who is taking a well-earned rest, stepping down from that post at this meeting. Another much-valued member of the Executive Committee who will be stepping down from his role – although not, I am pleased to say, until next year – is our Treasurer, Iain Whyte, whose careful husbanding of our resources has enabled all the BZS events to happen. Iain shares the credit for our financial stability with Marieke Clarke, who, as Membership Secretary, has overseen a growing (and paid-up!) membership and up-to-date membership records. Marieke has taken on the dual roles of Membership Secretary and Newsletter Editor, a combination which has worked well thanks to her commitment and outstanding dedication to these heavy tasks. There are others whose contribution I will discuss later; but first I want to pause a moment to consider the role of the Society and our obligations, as members, towards each other.

 We are about to elect a new executive committee, to keep the life-blood of the Society pumping. The Society still attracts energy and commitment from its executive. As some of our key officers step down, others have stepped up to take their place. In that context, I would like to thank Clayton Peel, who was elected as Vice-Chair last year and proved himself to be very effective in that role, having a rather dramatic inauguration chairing the annual strategy-setting meeting of the new Executive in my absence. We wish him well with the successful completion of his doctoral thesis in the coming year. I hope, however, that you will recognise the need for all members, and not just the Executive, to take an active role if BZS events are to continue to happen.

 A periodic rethink: some inconvenient truths

 The Society is constituted by its members. It seems that we have reached a point in the Society’s development where we need to ask what the point of this growing membership might be. What is it that people expect to get out of their membership of the Society? And are we delivering it? Ever since the Society was founded in 1981, we have recognised the need for periodic rethinking of what we can offer and what we think the Society can achieve. After twenty-six years, we are facing a new phase in our existence, when we need to negotiate the crossroads into a second-generation maturity.

 When the BZS was formed as a friendship society, it revolved around people-to-people linking at a grassroots level. It had its origins in community projects and in support for new grassroots initiatives. Our membership was predominantly British, reflecting the fact that there were, at that time, many fewer Zimbabweans in the UK than there are now. Many members were young people who had lived for a time in newly-independent Zimbabwe, working in schools or clinics – young people who are now going grey and sending their own children off for ‘gap year’ experiences!

 During the 1980s and 1990s, we not only linked community projects together, but we also linked governments with those projects. Our Dayschools on youth projects and on town twinning attracted significant attendance and support from government representatives of both Britain and Zimbabwe. We used to meet regularly with the FCO and with the Zimbabwe High Commission (as it then was). Throughout these years, we remained strictly non-political – a position that we still hold and that has stood us in good stead through more recent, more stressful times.

 During the 2000s, of course, much has changed. Linking has become much more difficult, although it is heartening to hear how much is still being achieved by the Stevenage-Kadoma Link. The Society has been marginalised by both governments, not least because we have always been ready to criticise them for undermining the human rights of ordinary Zimbabweans, whether in ill-treatment of asylum seekers in the UK or in ill-treatment of opposition activists in Zimbabwe.

 Moreover, our members now have less time to spend on our ‘traditional’ activities. Many people find that their energies are consumed by more political campaigning. Members of the Executive Committee find their time is squeezed by increasing demands for their specialist expertise, as Zimbabwean concerns take up more attention in the UK. A seemingly insatiable demand for expert advice in asylum cases has taken its toll on Terry Ranger and on myself, and no doubt on others both within the Exec Committee and in our broader membership. The need for information about AIDS in Zimbabwe has taken up much time from those of us working in health fields, including our Secretary, Frances Chinemana, and our Vice-Chair, Oliver Philips. And with time and general social change, our elders and time-rich volunteers are disappearing.

The nature of academia has also changed over the past three decades. Academics have less time to work on writing, particularly writing that will not count towards the Research Assessment Exercise. Consequently, we have seen our Newsletter/Research Review become less academically weighty – although stronger in other respects – with the concomitant threat to our institutional subscriptions from academic libraries.

Nonetheless… the good news
It might seem, then, as though the Society no longer has a clear role to play, and that other demands are consuming the energy that we used to have when we were young. Yet, when we look back over the past year, we find that the BZS has been very busy. Clearly, there is a need that we are fulfilling. Among our other activities, we have been involved in:

·         Asylum-related work. In addition to routine expert advice, BZS has been involved in briefings and training days for asylum lawyers, and, most importantly, Terence Ranger has been a key witness in the ‘AA’ Country Guidance case and now, the ‘HS’ Country Guidance case.

·         Research The June 2007 Research Day on ‘Urban Culture, Urban Crisis’ attracted international participation and provided a platform for new doctoral researchers, demonstrating that Zimbabwe studies are still thriving in the UK and benefit significantly from the work of BZS in providing an annual focus. We are grateful to Terence Ranger and Knox Chitiyo for their hard work in organising the event, and to St Antony's College for their support and facilities

·         Culture The Research Day was preceded by ‘An Evening with Joyce Jenje Makwenda,’ presenting an array of video and music.

·         Current affairs Brian MacGarry spoke to a packed meeting in Oxford on the current situation.

·         Fundraising In addition to the ongoing fundraising campaigns highlighted on our website, over £1,000 was raised at the MacGarry meeting for food relief in needy rural areas.

·         Networking Most importantly of all, however, throughout the year the Society has processed a quite extraordinary range and number of requests for help with linking and networking. These requests have related many topics, including education, health, culture and environment.

 Our fundamental and continuing role

Networking, then, remains at the heart of what BZS does. And this is the point at which I would like to conclude, acknowledging the immensely useful work of Margaret Ling, our Information Officer; Richard Brown, who diligently and efficiently maintains our website, and Philip Weiss, who has assisted in maintaining and building on the database that allows us to respond to many of these requests.

 Margaret, in particular, has an unrivalled set of contacts and a tireless commitment to moderating the bzs-info service. Many of us have had the experience, just before we retire to bed, of seeing that Margaret is at work sending out the day’s haul of messages. Her contributions keep us all linked together.

 I believe, then, that we can survive and flourish with the active involvement of our new generation of members. Our fundamental role remains as important as ever, despite the changes that have been taking place. BZS is the longest-established and most effective Zimbabwe network in the UK, and also the most wide-ranging in its interests and contacts. We continue, as we have always done, to act as the umbrella organisation under which others may meet and shelter.

                                                                                                             Diana Jeater