Research Day Report 2003

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ZIMBABWE DIASPORAS

A Report on the Research Day, 14 June 2003

The day was attended by some eighty people, some having come from the United States and others from Sweden, Germany etc. About half the participants were Zimbabweans. It was a glorious summer's day and the atmosphere became heated climatically even if not politically.

The day began with a session in tribute to the late Masipula Sithole, the very model of the public intellectual so much needed in Zimbabwe today. Thoko Matshe, herself a leading figure in Zimababwe's civil society and just back from Harare where she witnessed the events of the week of 'the last push', spoke about Masipula. When she worked with him he had seemed to her to be 'both old and young at the same time', old in wisdom and young in enthusiasm. Her memory of him was a smiling one because of his humour and a friendly one because of his readiness to understand every point of view. He was even prepared to sit for hours debating with Jonathan Moyo! She deeply regretted that he had died too soon to see and celebrate the transition to a democratic Zimbabwe. But she was glad he had not lived to see the Financial Gazette,in which his 'Public Eye' column had appeared, change its character under its new ownership.

During the last months of his life Sithole had been on sabbatical in the United States and interacting with the many Zimbabwean professionals working there. (He reported that there were at least four thousand Zimbabweans in Texas). Between 28 November 2002 and 16 January 2003 he had written a series of 'Public Eye' columns on the Zimbabwean diaspora. These were enormously popular and Masipula recorded that one admirer had demanded that he write eighteen of them - he replied that he could easily write a book. But the five pieces themselves covered a lot of ground. Terence Ranger presented their main arguments - with a few additions - as a way of setting up the presentations and discussions which were to follow.

Masipula began with the word 'diaspora' itself. It was coined by the Greeks to mean a 'dispersion' - the scattering of Greek speakers about the Mediterranean and Black Seas. But it came to be associated (as did the word 'genocide') particularly with the Jews. It came to stand in for the Hebrew word 'Galut', with its implication of exile: not only a dispersion but a flight from a homeland which had ceased itself to exist, For the Jews there were centuries of debate about identity. Were Jews to become citizens of the countries in which they lived? Could they - even in the days before the internet - make the diaspora itself constitute an identity? Or could the true Jewish identity only emerge with a return to the restored homeland?

Ranger commented that the word 'diaspora' became so exclusively connected to the Jews that when he set an examination question in Manchester about the 'African diaspora' the external examiner ruled it out. And yet, as Masipula goes on to argue, we can indeed talk about an African diaspora, and one which comes close to the meaning of 'Galut', with a history equally 'long and rich in agony' and raising the same set of issues about identity. This African diaspora was connected with slavery. But, writes Masipula, the Zimbabwean disaporas have been connected not with slavery but with colonialism.

So in his articles he discusses only colonial and post-colonial diasporas. Ranger remarked, though, that the research day was also considering pre-colonial diasporas. It would not look at slavery - even though the descendants of Shona-speaking slaves still contribute to the cultures and religions of Madagascar. But it would look at the great movements of peoples in nineteenth century southern Africa. As Masipula stresses, today South Africa - with an estimated million and a half Zimbabweans - is by far the most important site of the Zimbabwean diaspora. So Sabelo Ndlovu was going to talk about movements between the area which became South Africa and the area which became Zimbabwe before either had been defined as states. Diana Jeater was going to talk about white Afrikaner movements from the south into what became eastern Zimbabwe. Both Ndlovu and Jeater would raise fundamental questions of diasporic identity and culture.

These crucial interconnections with South Africa continued under early and middle colonialism, of course, with the coercive flow south of migrant labour. This linked Zimbabweans with South Africa and Zambians, Malawians and Mozambicans with the farms and towns of Zimbabwe. This produced a diasporic culture in the towns - home of what Mugabe has called 'the people without totems'. But Masipula Sithole does not talk about labour migration and Ranger remarked that when organising the research day he could not find anyone in the United Kingdom who was working on the subject. (Fifteen years ago it would have been hard to find someone who wasn't).

Masipula's detailed discussion begins with late colonialism. He starts with the period of nationalist exile in the 1960s and 1970s and makes two points. One is that Zimbabweans already in the diaspora - like Tongogara in Zambia - became heroes of the struggle to create the Zimbabwean homeland. The other is that during this period 'it was generally understood (and many felt) that a day was coming when the exiles would return'. Most Zimbabweans in Europe and the United States in the 1970s saw themselves essentially as 'exiles' and did not seek to settle into the host society or to create a diasporic culture. In 1980 most went home joyfully on what Masipula calls a 'one-way ticket' return.

He describes his own departure from the United States:

My wife vividly remembers our son Chandi, then a
three-year old, as he was leaving his grandma in South Elgin,
Illinois. His grandmother was calling on him already outside, carrying some of his toys to the car. 'Chandi, you didn't even say good-bye'. 'I can't, grandma. I will be late. I am going back to Africa', he replied, as if he had ever been there before!

And as for Masipula himself, he returned exclaiming in the words of Martin Luther King: 'Free at last, thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!'

As Masipula remarks, there were some old ZAPU exiles who did not return in 1980. As if thinking of the chairman of the first session, Edgar Moyo, he says that 'the PF ZAPU element that stayed put in the diaspora at independence is relatively old and wealthy' and many have become citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom or South Africa.

Then of course there came the flight of many younger people from Matabeleland during the 1980s. Ranger quoted from Robert Mugabe's address in honour of Joshua Nkomo's widow, MaFuyana, as she was buried at Heroes Acre on Saturday, 7 June 2003:

To be the wife of an African nationalist politician in those days of a vicious white settler colonial order was to be exposed to a hard life of anxiety, pain, self-denial, constant danger and tragedy. It meant watching helplessly many times as your husband was repeatedly arraigned before many courts, predictable judgements passed and equally predictable sentences handed down. It meant searching in many
detention centres and maximum prisons for a husband abducted and whisked away ... by the prowling, notorious Special Branch.

Ranger commented that it was indeed important to remember this colonial repression but that many of Nkomo's family must have remembered MaFuyana's fears in post-independence Zimbabwe as her husband was harassed, threatened and eventually forced to flee and briefly join the diaspora himself.

There would be no presentation on the 1980s during this research day, but no doubt the afternoon panel of 'expert' asylum assessors - Ranger himself, Jocelyn Alexander and Diana Jeater - would emphasise how often the events of that period feature as the beginning of the narratives of contemporary asylum seekers from Western Zimbabwe.

But as Masipula Sithole says, by far the most of the 'new arrivals to the diaspora have occurred during the past three years'. He makes five important points about the current diaspora which presenters would take up during the afternoon:

1. This time it looks like a real 'dispersion', what he calls being 'in the diaspora with one-way tickets'. There may be a permanent loss of skills to Zimbabwe. In the afternoon JoAnn McGregor would describe how Zimbabwean professionals - nurses, care-workers, social-workers, administrators, teachers - were being recruited into British public services.

2. Yet it also involves an extension of Zimbabean music, religion etc. In the afternoon David Maxwell would offer an example of religion in the Zimbabwean diaspora, using the case of the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God in Britain. (Ranger quoted from an article in the Zimbabwean press in which Reverend Noah Papasha had seen Zimbabwean Christianity as coming to dominate the UK. In the nineteenth century, he wrote, a small minority of whites, armed with Christianity, had managed to overcome millions of blacks. Today a small number of Zimbabweans, fervent with Christian faith, would overcome Britons who had lost it).

3. There is also a flow of hard currency from the diaspora into Zimbabwe - Masipula says that Zimbabweans are becoming a nation of currency smugglers. In the afternoon Joy Haukozi would talk on the diaspora and Zimbabwean finance.

4. Masipula says that as always in diasporas there is a tension between those outside and those inside the homeland. Ranger remarked that recent events seemed to demonstrate this clearly. He quoted from a report in the Zimbabwean press on 8 June. Tsvangarai's personal assistant and spokseman, William Bango, had written to Grace Kwinje in Belgium telling her that he was closing down his email:

When this service started I thought it could help some people get some information on what's happening in Zimbabwe, from
someone who is a keen observer stationed at a strategic space and specifically on the scene, daily.

Unfortunately some middle-class characters and those in the
Diaspora, away from the theatre of activity, have become a problem. They complain about grammar, syntax, and demand pictures, graphics, statistical tables and solid evidence (as if I am in a court of law). They writhe with anger every time they
receive a note from me, either because it is inadequate, the case is poorly presented ... They say all sort of unkind words for Morgan Tsvangarai ... heh, he is uneducated ... heh, he is a
poor strategist - heh, he is a condom that we will take off as
soon as we are satisfied with what we are doing.

In the afternoon there would be rather more optimistic presentations about diasporic use of the internet by Clayton Peel and Rolli Maziane. But there would be nothing on Masipula's last and most original point.
He focuses on the refugees in 'the diaspora across our border ... so nearby and capable of exploding' while the leaders of Zimbabwe 'are busy, very busy swelling them'. There are the post-Gukurahundi refugees in Bostwana and South Africa, 'just across the border and very unhappy. They could easily be the Bwanyamulenge of southern Africa.' And 'equally worrisome is the border with Mozambique', where refugees flee into Renamo-controlled zones. Reminding his readers that his brother, Ndabaningi, was found guilty of treason for raising the Chimwenje in Mozambique to invade Zimbabwe, Masipula asks whether such a possibility has vanished. 'Our republic is busy, very busy, surrounding itself with potentially unfriendly borders'.

Ranger believed that the research day would explore most of the issues raised by Masipula. But Zimbabwe diasporas could not be understood in isolation. Indeed, the diaspora of the last three years was a very recent one compared to other African dispersions - as for example Ghana's. So the day had to end with a comparative comment. Sara Rich-Dorman would conclude with a comparison between the Eritrean and Zimbabwean diasporas.

The second session was entitled 'Past Zimbabwean Diasporas'. It was chaired by Lynette Jackson, who had come from the United States to attend the day. Lynette is Assistant Professor in History and Gender Studies at the University of Illinois. She explained that her own work has focussed on migration and mental health and that she was preparing a book to be entitled When Women Walk: Sexualized Borders and the State in Colonial and Postcolonial Zimbabwe.

The session began, however, with a presentation on pre-colonial movements by Sabelo Ndlovu, Lecturer in History at the University of the Midlands in Gweru. Sabelo had prepared a paper entitled 'Rhetorics of Violence in South-Eastern Africa: a reconsideration of the Mfecane and the Southern African diaspora in the 19th century'. (Copies of this by e-mail attachment can be obtained from Terence Ranger). He started by saying that he would not try to read this paper. His own major temptation was an obsession with theory. He amused the audience by telling it that his theory of Gramscian hegemony would be 'too complex' for it.

He presented two models of the dramatic population movements of the nineteenth century - the 'traditional and the 'revisionist'. The 'traditional' model emphasised the 'push' factor of the violence of the mfecane. It argued that Shaka Zulu's wars of conquest and slaughter had driven away many refugee groups, including the Ndebele. The 'revisionist' view, for which he quoted Julian Cobbing and Norman Etherington, denied the centrality of Shaka and the vision of anarchic violence.

He himself shared this revisionist view but aimed to develop it further. He sees the Khumalo not just as refugees in flight but as powerful and ambitious builders of a new state and ultimately of a new society. He seeks to apply a 'human rights and democracy' perspective to the Ndebele state, not of course in terms of contemporary human rights discourse but in terms of analysing the hegemonic ideology which defined both the authority of the state and its limitations.

He spoke of three periods of Khumalo expansion and assimilation. There was an initial migration away from authoritarian power in Nguni-land. 'They always loved freedom'. There followed an expansive movement in search of the best environment in which to found a new society. Violence and the 'push' factor had been over-emphasised. Equally important were the 'pull' factors of the grazing lands and potential of the interior. Mzilikazi he sees in Gramscian terms as an 'organic intellectual', more important as an ideological innovator than as a military leader. His followers had to understand and act out his vision and build in their own aspirations. The final phase was the arrival on the Zimbabwean high veld and the creation of as assimilationist nationality, absorbing speakers of many different languages. A dominant and hegemonic culture, associated with Sindebele language, was created, but room was allowed for the continuance of local vernaculars and local religious and cultural beliefs.

In the context of the history of Zimbabwean diasporas many issues arose from Ndlovu's presentation. The new society created in western Zimbabwean had cultural links not only with the Nguni/Zulu but also with Tswana and Sotho and Kalanga and other groups to the south. The hegemonic ideology of the Ndebele state was in many ways a typical diasporic identity, expressing itself in myths of exile and journey and re-founding.

There were a surprising number of parallels with Diana Jeater's presentation on Afrikaner treks into Melsetter district. She was talking about a series of treks encouraged by Cecil Rhodes - rather as he encouraged the immigration of the Fingos to Matabeleland. In this case Rhodes wanted a buffer along the eastern border with Portuguese territory. The Afrikaners themselves saw their trek as a diaspora, with its story of journey and fortitude and its myth of an Edenic end. They saw themselves as quite different from the Pioneer Column, which was made up of prospectors and speculators. The Melsetter trekkers by contrast saw themselves as farmers and stockmen. Their arrival in the territory, they claimed, changed the image of Rhodesia from a terrain of white hunters and traders to a country of settlement. The trekkers came from many different Afrikaner communities in South Africa and their composite 'Dutch' identity was one into which others could fit - like the Scots who joined them. Some were men of substance, who had left their farms in South Africa; most were pushed by relative poverty and pulled by the agricultural potential of the eastern frontier. Rhodes had promised that they would be able to preserve a 'Dutch' culture.

They made a challenging journey, bringing their large wagons over terrain with no roads. They arrived in densely settled areas and took hold of African land, seeing themselves as bearers of civilisation. Even the kraal of 'chief' Musikavanhu - ancient centre of a divine rain cult - was demarcated as a farm until saved by the Native Commissioner. The incoming diaspora focussed only on their own narratives and ignored those of the Africans or of the English Rhodesians.

They saw themselves as heroes. But they were not seen like that by others. They did not succeed as farmers because they had no roads, no labour and no markets. The missionaries thought the trekkers discredited Christianity; Native Commissioner Meredith thought that they treated Africans like slaves. Yet Africans provided the yardstick by which the Afrikaner diaspora was judged. They themselves insisted on their whiteness; Rhodesian administrators feared that they would descend into an African existence. They ate meal porridge; African children were better educated than their own. (The mission schools taught in Zulu and English and the settlers used only Dutch and Ndau). So they were variously characterised by other white Rhodesians - as 'Dutch', as 'white Africans', and as potentially disloyal in any confrontation with the Transvaal. Yet they persisted in maintaining their distinct identity, putting the church before the pub and celebrating their feast of Nachtmaal. Today, however, there is no surviving Dutch identity in Melsetter. They never accumulated enough wealth to hold their families together; their children were educated in English. Where the Khumalo succeeded in making their culture and language hegemonic in Matabeleland, 'Dutchness' vanished in eastern Zimbabwe.

Lynette Jackson raised the questions of diasporic identities; of hegemony; of power, of incorporation, of the discourse of the trek . She suggested that Mamdani's distinction between subjects and citizens might be usefully applied. She asked Sabelo Ndlovu to explore these questions further in the Ndebele case.

Sabelo replied that he saw Mzilikazi as an intellectual innovator, who realised that his vision could only be realised by a mixture of coercion and consent. In Zimbabwe he 'partly conquered and partly converted'. Asked what 'deal' Mzilikazi was able to offer, Sabelo's answer was 'security'. Lynette suggested that the myths of diaspora needed deeper examination. Diana pointed out that in her case the Melsetter settlers had a discourse quite different from that of the Great Trek. They had been invited in to a new colony; their trek was not a flight from colonial authority. Their rhetoric was of 'civilisation' rather than 'freedom'. They were 'republicans under the crown' but citizens of Rhodesia.

Terence Ranger suggested that one of the points of studying pre-colonial movements was to dissolve our usual assumptions about territorial identities - of the distinct existence of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and of South Africa. What we had seen in the presentations was the creation of nationality and territorial identities out of a very fluid situation. The 'Dutch' of Melsetter helped to fix an artificial boundary between related African groups. The Ndebele state brought together many different clans, some of which had migrated from the south much earlier than Mzilikazi. (Pathisa Nyathi's book on the Bhebe clan, for instance, revealed that they had migrated from the Nguni area in the seventeenth century; lived for a long time amongst the Venda, then moved into the Rozwi state, and finally been either dispersed eastwards to become 'Shona' or assimilated into Mzilikazi's state to become 'Ndebele'). People in Matabeleland had historical links not only - or mainly - with the Zulu but also with many other groups in what is now South Africa. He recommended Norman Etherington's recent book, The Great Treks. It was important that in the new Zimbabwean diaspora the identities created in the nineteenth century did not become essentialised.

The third session was entitled 'Aspects of the Contemporary Diaspora' and was chaired by Beacon Mbiba. The first presentation, by David Maxwell, addressed the question of Zimbabwean diasporic religion in Britain. He spoke on the Forward in Faith Movement, the diasporic expression of Emmanuel Guti's Zimbabwe Assemblies of God, ZAOGA. Maxwell is writing a book about ZAOGA, working his way into the movement in Zimbabwe by first attending the London church. As a student of the social history of religion, he was fascinated by a mission moving in a counter-direction from Zimbabwe to the UK. He found a tension between seeking to convert Britain and creating in exile a place for Zimbabweans to feel at home.

In Central Africa ZAOGA had grown by means of Malawian and Zambian migrant labourers returning to their home countries and establishing local churches. These were later taken over by Zimbabwean ZAOGA evangelists. In the UK there was an immigrating rather than a returning constituency. FIFM churches were first set up by Zimbabwean immigrants. But they aimed from the beginning to convert 'Western', apostates and back-sliders. Guti himself often preached about the collapse of Christianity in Europe. 'There is a darkness over London'. In Frankfurt, Guti said, he had visited a 'beautiful church. But God was not there. Just people'. He himself did not aspire to owning a handsome house in London since living in it would endanger his soul. (Nevertheless, Maxwell remarked, there was a constant 'repatriation' of goods from the West as FIFM members sent back cots and knitting machines).

FIFM in Britain began from two families in the 1970s. Soon the Times was reporting Zimbabwean missionaries in darkest Edgeware, using all the cliches of evangelical discourse. There was a false start as the two FIFM families recruited an Afro-Caribbean congregation, but this attempt to bring two disaporas together failed. The two families re-grouped. Slowly the church built up in the 1990s and ZAOGA tracts, tapes and videos were brought in. Converts were inducted into the story of Guti's prophetic vision. Assemblies were founded across London and in Glasgow.

Some whites were recruited. Like converts in the early Christian history of Africa they tended to be drawn from the most marginal and impoverished sectors of London and Glasgow. Many lacked self-confidence. They were attracted to the warmth, self-confidence and exoticism of the Shona Christians. One of them told David that it was marvellous to experience within the FIFM 'the smell of land roasting in the oven'. Zimbabwe seemed like a real Holy Land. Yet this initial enchantment turned into violent disillusion. The white converts complained about their African missionaries in much the same ways as African converts have often complained about European ones. They had hoped for transformation by the Spirit; they had found 'a crushing of personality'. One white told David that 'Zimbabweans do not understand our depression. They are just too cheerful!' On their side, the FIFM evangelists deplored the lack of industry and discipline among their white converts. 'Whites have too many human rights'.

So there was a crisis in the church by the end of the 1990s. The whites left. But the crisis was resolved with the great Zimbabwean diaspora of the last three years. The FIFM assemblies became big and self-reliant and virtually entirely Zimbabwean. They were now very much places in which Zimbabweans could feel at home.

And yet, Maxwell concluded, Guti himself now lays much less emphasis upon the Zimbabwean nature of his church. Guti says that ZAOGA is big enough in Harare and that it must grow internationally. He spends much time in the United States and Australia. Perhaps the FIFM movement will develop a real global personality and provide a field for diasporic Zimbabwean evangelical leadership. Perhaps it will indeed contribute to the refreshment of Christianity in the United Kingdom. Yet if it does so it will be a socially conservative contribution. Contrary to many post-colonial assumptions, this returning black Christianity does not make its alliances with radicals and revolutionaries.

Joy Haukozi spoke next, apologising for 'such a dry subject' as Zimbabwean finance. She explained that her main interest was in financial sector reform and that she had been asked by the world bank to design reforms for Uganda. Her days as a radical critic of the world system were over: these days she aspired to a reformed capitalism. In this perspective - and in the midst of its multiple crises - Zimbabwe presented an unexpected opportunity. Its finance sector and its stock exchange were sophisticated and well structured. There had been a Central Bank since 1956 and the Stock Exchange has proper global trading, very much on the UK model. Zimbabwe has 'amazingly glamorous financial services' for an undeveloped economy. The current rate of inflation - the highest in the world - has made the quality of the financial sector meaningless. But Zimbabwean bank stock is still valuable and the banks make huge profits even if in rather artificial ways. There has been a flight of capital to property and housing. Yet the financial structure is still sound and could recover quite quickly.

There are, however, very many signs of current crisis. There has been a huge decline in Gross Domestic Product. There is no way round the shortage of hard currency. Mugabe may say he will trade with Malaysia but Zimbabwe has to trade even with Malaysia in US dollars. The great differences between the official and parallel exchange rates undermines all trade. The Zimbabwean government has created a 'huge balloon of debt' so that the private sector cannot borrow. When money is sent home to relatives they cannot withdraw it from the banks. Zimbabwe cannot raise credit even in South Africa. It has become prohibitive to take risks.
There is a massive credit squeeze which gets tighter and tighter.

How does all this link with the diaspora? Partly, of course, it drives the diaspora as a 'push' factor. The 'good life' which Masipula Sithole sees as the dream of all the Zimbabwean diasporas no longer seems obtainable in Zimbabwe itself. Partly the diaspora itself contributes to the distortion of the Zimbabwean economy, fuelling the black market both consciously and unconsciously. The Zimababwean Minister of Finance's belief that God has provided the diaspora as a way of resolving Zimbabwe's shortage of hard currency seems unlikely to be justified. Zimbabweans outside the country send commodities home - the cots and sewing machines mentioned by David Maxwell - but that does not help the economy. Nor can Zimbabweans in the diaspora just write off their fellows at home - 'We'd need an awful lot of one way tickets to get everyone out'. Joy herself would like to see Zimbabweans in London buying Old Mutual shares at the Stock Exchange. She would like to see the Zimbabwean government issuing a bond with real incentives for subscription by the diaspora. The day school heard at the end of the day that Eritrea had long depended on remissions from Eritreans abroad. Joy was asking her audience to think of ways to make the relationship of the Zimbabwean diaspora to the home economy more positive.

In some ways JoAnn McGregor, who spoke next, was describing some of the 'pull' factors as she explored openings in Britain for the professionals who were leaving Zimbabwe in such numbers. She told the Research Day that she was undertaking a research project together with the Zimbabwe Association about Zimbabwean public servants in the diaspora. This was the other end of her research in Zimbabwe, which she had reported in an article in African Affairs. She had herself witnessed in northern Matabeleland the war veterans storming administrative offices and driving out professional civil servants. Those who assessed asylum cases constantly encountered narratives of assaults on school teachers and nurses. Zimbabwe's efficient and professional public sector had been deliberately undermined in a kind of 'cultural revolution'. This was a literal 'push' factor.

The question she wanted to explore now was what these ousted professionals could do. In Zimbabwe itself they went either into cross-border trading or into the NGO sector. Those who joined the diaspora had different options open to them.

The flight of skilled Zimbabwean professionals to Britain over the past three years had coincided with a crisis in British social services. Britain was short of teachers, nurses, carers, social service administrators. Zimbabweans were fluent in English and well trained. The British government had undertaken not to directly recruit professionals from developing countries. But now private recruiting agencies has taken over and were used by the National Health Service and increasingly by other social services. The results were startling. Over the last three years Zimbabweans had become the fourth most significant nationality group in the British Health sector. Zimbabwean carers were prominent in old people's homes everywhere in Britain. Teachers and social workers were harder to place but even in these professions Zimbabwean numbers were rising. Even if Zimbabwean Christians did not look like re-moralising Britain, Zimbabwean professionals were playing an increasing part in keeping it going physically and mentally. It was more difficult for highly qualified professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers etc. Such Zimbabweans tended to enter the diaspora in the United States, while the diaspora in Britain was largely a service diaspora.

There was now much academic analysis of 'new African diasporas' In many cases these were analysed as old trading connections globalised. The Zimbabwean diaspora was rather different with its emphasis upon social and educational qualifications and upon historical connections..

Angelous Dube, ex-Provincial Administrator of Matabeleland South, commented at the end of this session. She reminded the Research Day that public service was crucial to development. She had been taught that civil servants could be judged by the quality of the service they offered to the public - was it available, quick, friendly? Civil servants were not rulers or politicians but providers of service. Zimbabwe had spent years of effort and large sums of money to train professionals. There had been a profound preparation for development, though after 17 years 'we still had not won' or reached the targets. And now Zimbabwe was throwing all this away.

She spoke of her own career. She had always been a pioneer. She was one of the first to take a professional administrative degree at the University of Zimbabwe. She was the first woman District Administrator and the first woman Provincial Administrator - the senior woman in Local Government. Now she was 'the most famous - or notorious - ex-civil servant'.

She was bound to be in trouble with the war veterans. She was 'single, strong-minded and did not mince words'. They approached her to allocate them government cars to use to travel the farms they were going to occupy. She refused to allow the use of state resources to take the property of 'fellow citizens'. So the war veterans were paid $30 each to go in a band to evict her from office. They were warned by a ZANU/PF politician 'That woman is an orator. Don't talk to her. Just throw her out of the window' - a window one storey up. The ZBC was alerted beforehand so they could cover fifty armed veterans chasing a 'sell-out'. They came, shouting - 'You owe this office to us. You must do what we order'. They were followed by a crowd of women and children, anxious to see what would follow. She told them: 'I am not employed by war veterans' and was escorted away safely by police, who are themselves now in trouble for having protected her.

She was hastily taken to Harare, given a nice office and a computer and told to write her own job description. She created an office of Research and Public Relations, but was fast-tracked out of the system. The MDC then tried to recruit her but she refused them too.

Her case set a precedent and showed that anyone could be kicked out. Now she was in Britain pursuing further studies and watching with deep sadness the draining away of the brains that should be developing Zimbabwe.

Angelous had indeed proved to be an orator and received an ovation. .
Her story brought together all the costs of the diaspora. In the brief time available for discussion an indignant asylum seeker declared that he would never invest in bonds issued by a government which could destroy its own services. Others urged that Zimbabweans in the diaspora had a duty to further develop their own skills. 'We are Africans. We have a responsibility'. Care certificates would not be enough to help in the development of a new Zimbabwe. Joy Haukozi replied that diasporic Zimbabweans should invest in education and medical provision for those inside Zimbabwe as well as seeking to further educate themselves.

There was no time after this long session to explore its thematic links with the discussions of the morning. It would have been good, for example, to make a connection with the earlier presentations on South Africa, so as to understand the ways in which earlier relationships generated by pre-colonial movements and by colonial migrant labour were now being re-activated. It would have been good to contrast the professional character of the diaspora in the United States and its service character in Britain with the much larger and more varied diaspora in SA. Obviously Zimbabweans of all classes - farm workers and labour migrants as well as teachers and nurses - are entering South Africa, most seeking work but many seeking asylum.

It would have been good, finally, to explore further in relation to the diaspora in the United Kingdom the issues of diasporic identity which were raised in the morning. What sustaining myths of the journey and its purpose had been created? What kinds of assimilation into the main diasporic identity had taken place? Was this a diaspora of 'freedom' as Sabelo Ndlovu had characterised the Ndebele movements, or of 'civilisation' as Diana Jeater had characterised the Afrikaner? Did Zimbabwean diasporic identity reside in participation in the countries where they now resided, in a dreamt-of return to the home-land, or in the very existence of the diaspora itself? Only David Maxwell's presentation on ZAOGA had offered insights into these questions, but the following papers on the internet and the diaspora took some of them further.

It had been the original intention for the fourth session to focus on the Zimbabwean arts - on literature with the self-exiled Chenjerai Hove and on music with Chartwell Dutiro. It would have been fascinating to find out from Hove - whose novels are so deeply rooted in Zimbabwean traditional and modern life - whether and what he found possible to write in France. It would have been equally fascinating to find out from Dutiro whether Zimbabwean music in Europe was part of the process of creating a place for Zimbabweans to feel at home or part of a process of 'conversion' and globalisation. (Perhaps Dutiro's British mbira players will prove more consistent converts that the temporary white members of ZAOGA). In the end neither could make the Research Day - Chenjerai Hove falling foul of UK visa requirements.

The chair of the session, Hilton Mendelsohn, improvised magnificently to create a panel on the internet in the diaspora, which turned out to raise fundamental questions of identity and expression. The first presentation was made by Clayton Peel, a journalist from Bulawayo now working for a doctorate at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. Peel's paper on the 'new media' was a version of his doctoral proposal and he brandished its formidable pages at the audience. A full version is available as an email attachment from Terence Ranger. But Clayton set his paper down and gave a cyber sermon instead.

The internet, he said, was a providential gift to the diaspora. At the most basic level it kept them informed about events in Zimbabwe and in touch with each other. It was easily possible to read all the Zimbabwean newspapers every day; to listen to radio broadcasts and to participate in chat-shows; to receive regular email attachments from human rights organisations and political parties. Never, perhaps, had any diaspora been so well informed about its homeland.

But Clayton argued that the internet was more important even than this. He developed a concept of 'cyber-democracy'. Within Zimbabwe today, despite the continuance of the 'independent' press, information was controlled and debate was constrained. He thought it would be impossible now to hold a meeting like this one inside Zimbabwe. Radio and television were monopolised by the state and the government had powers to intervene in email. Yet there was an obvious need for 'plurality of political discourse' and also, he argued, for 'plurality of ethnic expression'.

In his independence speech Robert Mugabe had emphasised the variety of Zimbabwean cultures. But today the Zimbabwean state was insisting on a single version of the nation and its history. In reality Zimbabwe was still multiple and plural - a real rainbow nation. Internet Web-sites now allowed for individuals to voice their views and for communities to express their culture. There were now sites in Shona, Sindebele, the Goffle street-speech of 'Coloureds', in smaller vernacular languages. There was a freedom on the internet. The first Meldrum case in Zimbabwe had established the principle that what was carried on the internet was not judiciable in a Zimbabwe court. Moreover, Zimbabwe was effectively open to internet discourse, not isolated like North Korea. The diaspora could talk to Zimbabwe.

All this meant, though, that the freedom and power given by the internet must be used responsibly. Harking back to the protests voiced by Tsvangarai's spokesman, Bango, which Ranger had quoted in the first session, Clayton emphasised that the diaspora must not manifest itself merely as smug, superior and abusive.

The second speaker was Rolli Maziane, who had come forward without notice to fill the gap. He turned out to be a pioneer of internet in the diaspora. Mtwagazi UK had been formed by members of the flow of refugees from Matabeleland via Dukwe camp in the 1980s. Life was very different when they arrived in the United Kingdom. They found themselves in isolation. There was no large Zimbabwean diaspora. It was terribly hard to get information - 'a single copy of the Herald was like gold'. Trelford's article in the Observer about the 5 Brigade in Matabeleland was treated liked a manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Meanwhile on British TV, when scenes from Matabeleland were screened, viewers watched them as though they were some natural catastrophe out of wild Africa, like the annual running and deaths of the wildebeeste herds on the Serengeti.

They desperately needed to speak in the oral tradition of the elders; to proclaim their humanity. So the rise of the internet and of email came as a wonderful opportunity for them. At first, perhaps, their Inkundla site was useful mainly for letting off steam and expressing anger in deep Sindebele. But now they know they must 'get beyond letting off steam to generate ideas'. They need to encourage people in the diaspora to support schools and hospitals in Matabeleland. And they need to use not only Sindebele but to sustain all the languages of Matabeleland - 'of the people who preceded Mzilikazi'. We are twenty-first century people but there 'is no need to eradicate our footsteps'. There had been many changing 'isms' in Zimbabwe since 1980 'but our people will remain - a quilt made up of every culture'.

In the discussion there were some doubts and hesitations expressed. Brighton Chireka said that very few Zimbabweans, even in the diaspora, used the internet. It offered democracy to a minority. Others asked how the fullness of a rainbow nation could be expressed by the existence of exclusive vernacular web-sites. One needed translation - maybe a site which anthologised the others. Rolli Maziane replied that English was used on all the sites - 'in South Africa they say you can tell a Zimbabwean by his tendency to want to use English. We just can't let that language alone'. Angelous Dube, drawing on her experience of the multi-culturalism of southern Matabeleland, said that it was crucial to use Sotho, Kalanga, Venda etc as well as Shona and Sindebele. She had urged that the constitutional draft be translated into all these languages. This was not done - and 'look what happened in the referendum'.

There was a fear that the internet was irresponsible as well as democratic and that cyber-speak tended to be rasher and more intemperate than face to face communication. People wondered how a composite narrative for the diaspora and ultimately for Zimbabwe could arise from so many different voices. But the session ended positively with Diana Jeater remarking that music communicated more universally and naturally. The words of Zimbabwean songs certainly were important - someone was doing a SOAS doctorate on the lyrics of Chartwell Dutiro's songs. But the music itelf was embracing and incorporative. She promised that art and writing and music would all feature strongly at the Britain Zimbabwe Society's day-school in Bristol on September 13.

The fifth session was chaired by Brighton Chireka of the Zimbabwe Association, himself an asylum-seeker. It took the form of a panel discussion between members of the Britain-Zimbabwe Society's list of 'expert' assessors of asylum appeals. Terence Ranger, Jocelyn Alexander, and Diana Jeater participated; Millius Palayiwa spoke from his experience of immigration translation.

Terence Ranger said that he had seen some 35 Zimbabwean asylum appeals. (In the five days since the Research Day he has seen another five!). Some patterns emerged strongly. Nearly all the cases which came to him concerned applicants who were not MDC leaders and often not even local MDC activists. Overwhelmingly they were either relatives of activists - often young women who were sexually assaulted or raped as a punishment for the family - or educated people in the countryside whom the war veterans suspected of propagandising for the MDC. Angelous Dube had talked of her own eviction showing that any public servant could be attacked and the cases Ranger had seen certainly showed that this was true. Many applicants were headmasters, primary school teachers, nurses. (One was a ZAOGA pastor).

These people characteristically complained that were assaulted, raped, etc not by the police or by soldiers (though the Human Rights NGOs were now documenting more and more police and army involvement in torture). In the cases Ranger had seen the perpetrators were war veterans and youth militias. The police had stood by. (He had seen one case which concerned a policeman who deserted because he could not endure being unable to serve the public).

This pattern meant that all these cases had been refused at the first adjudication. Home Office country reports now stress the danger to MDC activists, while 18 months ago they were stressing the danger to white farmers. This is an improvement but it leads to literally dozens of questions designed to test an applicant's knowledge of the MDC - the names of shadow cabinet ministers (though the idea of an MDC cabinet is a shadowy one in itself ); the results of local council elections, etc,etc. These questions are irrelevant to the majority of the asylum appeals.

This emphasis on active membership of the MDC goes along with a particular interpretation by the adjudicators of the International Conventions on Refugees. These require the protection of people in danger from the officials of a state. Adjudicators maintain that war veterans and youth militia are not officials of the Zimbabwean state. An adjudicator can tell a young woman who claims to have been adbducted by war veterans, serially raped, and held prisoner as the second wife of the leader of the band, that there is no evidence that she has ever been or is now in any danger from the Zimbabwean state. He can even tell her - despite the fact that the police and social services in Bulawayo refused to intervene on her behalf - that the Zimbabwean government has not been derelict in its duty to protect her.

Adjudicators know a great deal more about Zimbabwe than they did 18 months ago but this increased knowledge leads to some strange inversions of judgement. In one case a young woman teacher in a Matabeleland primary school gave her youngest students an art exercise for the Christmas vacation, 2001. Applying what she had been taught in training college, she told them to draw around their hands, colour in the shapes, and write across them 'Jesus is King'. Of course this meant that in every village household the children were producing open hands - the symbol of the MDC. War veterans came and ordered her to leave; when she ventured back at the beginning of term they assaulted her. The first adjudicator to hear he case told her she had discredit herself by claiming that any government could be worried by a primary school exercise. The second, who heard her case 18 months later, told he that he did not believe she had set the exercise because she must have known how dangerous it would be! 18 months ago adjudicators refused to believe that teachers were in danger. Now, in a recent case an adjudicator told an applicant that because teachers were in such danger he was pretending to be a teacher!

Ranger concluded that an 'expert' had time and time again to hammer home the message that there had been a decentralisation and privatisation of punishment and vengeance in Zimbabwe. War veterans and youth militia were allowed to take the law into the own hands and the police had been instructed not to intervene. The state was nevertheless ultimately responsible for the violence. An 'expert' also had to emphasise that history was important. Time and time again the Matabeleland applications he had seen began with the 1980s during which a grandparent or parent had been killed. Adjudicators routinely said that these deaths were irrelevant to the present. But they were not since they were the beginning of a sequence in which ZAPU families, alienated from the state, had moved to support the Liberty Party or the MDC, while ex-ZIPRA war veterans interpreted this as punishable treason to the nationalist tradition.

He began to wonder whether instead of writing so many separate assessments a way could not be found to write one major paper on the history and shape of violence in Zimbabwe. He emphasised, however, that an 'expert' really had to know about every district and town - almost every school and village - in Zimbabwe. Adjudicators assumed that they knew about Zimbabwe in general - one had to challenge them with the particular.

Jocelyn Alexander said that her experience as an assessor had been very similar. What was going on in Zimbabwe was 'a struggle within the state'. This was also often a struggle within villages and even within families. Allegations and assaults were often the result of jealousies and envy; of long social and family resentments. When one of its members was attacked a whole kin cluster became vulnerable. These were 'intimate confrontations', mostly not involving primary political activists, but putting people in very real danger. The whole atmosphere of rural Zimbabwe was being poisoned. Sometimes the only way for an extended family to survive was to exclude the denounced member from its support networks. She added that in her experience solicitors were very variable in their competence and energy. On the other hand the regular reports on torture and rape by Zimbabwean Human Rights Organisations were invaluable.

Diana Jeater added that asylum applications often showed the effects of the advice given by people in the diaspora about what it was useful to say if you wanted to impress an adjudicator. So, for instance, people would pretend to have been more active in the MDC than had really been the case, sometimes actually suppressing a real story which showed that they had been in great danger. Making an academic point for a moment, she stressed the value of asylum appeal files as a source for the contemporary history of Zimbabwe.

Millius read from the latest statistics showing both that Zimbabweans came third, after Iraqis and Somalis, in number of asylum applicants, and also that the figures were being massaged in every possible way to show a drop. He read out some of the hundred questions asked of an uneducated Zimbabwean asylum seeker, a farm worker from Plumtree.
He pointed to the rise of 'chicanery' and exploitation by agents as a result of visa requirements. More and more Zimbabwean asylum seekers were arriving with bogus South African passports.

None of the BZS 'experts' had dealt with any cases involving white Zimbabweans but a young white Zimbabwean woman in the audience testified that the Home Office treated white Zimbabwean applicants as unsympathetically as it did black. There were moment of high emotion when outrages of two years ago were remembered - of detention and forced removal. It was stressed that there were outrages happening today. Zimbabweans were not being forcibly returned but once their appeals had been refused they were given no assistance and were not allowed to work. Some of these were either already qualified or were being trained as nurses and carers - the very people so needed in the British social services. Almost all Zimbabwean asylum seekers were fluent in English, Christian and arrived with valid passports. They should be the easiest of all to assimilate. The audience remembered JoAnn McGregor's appeal that asylum policy should be managed in relation to Britain's need for skills.

At long last, and later than programmed, we arrived at the concluding session. Heike Schmidt chaired this, encouraging Sara Rich Dorman to present her comparisons between the Eritrean and Zimbabwean diasporas to the resilient remaining audience. The result threw some fascinating light both on what we had discussed and what we had not.

Sara said that there seemed some comparisons to be made between Eritrea and Zimbabwe. Both had achieved nationhood after brutal liberation wars. Scholar-activists like Basil Davidson and Lionel Cliffe had studied and supported both. But there are also important differences. The Eritrean diaspora had been indispensable to its liberation war and Eritrea since independence has been defined as a 'diasporic state'. This has been obviously so from the beginning while in Zimbabwe the importance of the disapora had been perceived much more recently. In Eritrea there had long been a trade off between the brain drain and remittances. Remittances had enabled the war to continue since the Eritrean resistance was supported by no outside power. Today the Eritrean state is unique in levying a successful tax on Eritreans in the diaspora. When it perceives that the brain drain and remittances are not in balance the Eritrean State just closes it borders and prevents people from leaving. Speakers had emphasises that despite its economic crisis and its undermining of its civil service Zimbabwe remained a powerful state. But Eritrea was much more efficient! Eritreans abroad subscribed to state bonds and were offered land as surety.

So far so good. But remittances led to rentier economics. Diaspora politics were even more embittered and intense that politics inside Eritrea, partly due to the internet. There were cyber-wars. There were also beginning to be debates over identity. Eritrean Pentecostal churches were more powerful in the diaspora than in Eritrea and their type of Christianity threatened some historical versions of Eritrean identity. In general it seemed that the Eritrean diaspora was beginning to fragment - to become in fact more like the Zimbabwean.

So the day finished. Diana Jeater, as Chair of the Britain Zimbabwe Society, thanked all those who had been involved in running the Research Day and especially all those who had attended it and endured to its end.

T.O. Ranger

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