South African banks have been releasing very interesting financial figures which indicate the financial advantages Zimbabwe is enjoying due to its citizens who are either economically or politically marooned in South Africa.
The issue of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora being allowed to vote and to participate in electoral proceedings is an underestimated necessity.
At first, Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government didn’t want to hear about it because they suspected that those who are in the Diaspora, as political or economic refugees, had been driven out of Zimbabwe by ZANU-PF’s violence, lack of jobs and bad policies.
That being the fact, they feared that, if given the chance, those in the Diaspora would certainly cast votes against ZANU-PF.
So many times we heard Mugabe pouring scorn on those economic refugees working in the UK, Europe, US, Australia and elsewhere, saying that they left home so as to wash white people’s behinds in nursing homes overseas.
There is no question that Mugabe and his party viewed Zimbabwe’s economic refugees with disgust because those exiles were undisputed proof of things gone terribly wrong in Zimbabwe and Mugabe loathed that and would not entertain any thought of putting in place a system to enable the Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to vote.
But as more and more Zimbabweans left home, something started happening as those same Zimbabweans started remitting millions and millions of foreign currency into financially strapped Zimbabwe, a country that was literally broke and had resorted to printing worthless pieces of paper as a way of camouflaging the economic crisis bedevilling the country.
Many Bureaux de Change were opened to cater for the growing number of remittances from Zimbabweans abroad.
I remember that at that time, around 2004, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono, squandered money overseas where he went to promote his financial tuck-shop called Homelink. It failed as Diasporians stuck with established money transfer companies, like Western Union.
I cannot imagine how relatives back home in Zimbabwe would have survived during the draught and during those times when Mugabe, then as now, denied food to some people because they were suspected to be sympathetic to the MDC.
People in the Diaspora saved their kin in Zimbabwe and, painfully, the money they were remitting was also finding its way into government and ZANU-PF coffers.
Even the then nascent MDC tremendously benefitted financially from Zimbabweans in the Diaspora.
But looking at how these political parties treated Zimbabweans in the Diaspora in their new Constitution will show how unthankful and conniving these politicians are.
They barred Diasporians from voting and refused to put in place a system that would have made it possible for them to vote from wherever they are.
In March, just before the referendum over the constitution, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) secretariat ruled that “Zimbabweans living in the Diaspora should be allowed to vote in the referendum and in forthcoming elections”.
The ACHPR said that the State (Zimbabwe) must “provide all eligible voters…the same voting facilities it affords to Zimbabweans working abroad in the service of the government and that the respondent State takes measures to give effect to its obligations under the African Charter in accordance with Article 1 of the African Charter, including in areas of free participation in the government”.
It never happened and the MDC, not surprisingly, agreed with ZANU-PF on the issue to deny citizens abroad their right to vote.
Zimbabweans in the Diaspora are being used by both parties. Now “the government is said to be ‘happy’ with a Diaspora that continues remitting millions to Zimbabwe, because of the ongoing weak state of the national economy” as “recent figures from South Africa have suggested that roughly $600 million is being remitted to Zimbabwe annually from the Diaspora”.
South Africa’s First National Bank released information to the effect that Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa remit more that 6.7 billion Rands to Zimbabwe every year.
“We are not encouraging the Diaspora to come home because once you are back home you are not very valuable,” Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara told a Zimbabwe investment conference held in South Africa last month. “We’d prefer a strong Diaspora that will help this country to develop either by way of remittances or investment.”
And yet they deny us the right to vote and other rights and privileges that we deserve as citizens of Zimbabwe living abroad. It is ironic that our absence from Zimbabwe makes Zimbabwe financially stronger through the money we send back home to our families yet we are not extended those basic human rights such as voting.
At first, the government did not want the Diasporas to vote or return home fearing that they would swing the elections against ZANU-PF.
Now the same government does not want the Diasporas to vote or return home because they are remitting more than US $600 million home every year.
So, who is using us? Our own government or those foreigners whose white behinds we are wiping in the nursing homes around the world?
Both the MDC and ZANU-PF, along with their leaders, must be ashamed of themselves!
It is difficult to comprehend how the MDC capitulated on the denying of Zimbabweans of their rights to vote; going as far as putting it in the recently approved constitution. It is truly incomprehensible that, in their quest for personal glory, the MDC could consider using people’s rights as quid pro quo for farvours that hardly benefit the nation.
But here we are. Both the MDC and ZANU-PF want our money but they won’t let us vote for either one of them.
It is not a question of money; it is all about people’s rights and government responsibility.
The abuse, the sidelining and the neglect of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora must stop before we go any further. The MDC, which by far benefits more from those in the Diaspora, must act on this issue soon after their disgusting betrayal of sacrificing human rights for their short-sighted political chess games.
