Not Welcoming Mnangagwa

DRIVING ALONG Mandume Ndemufayo Avenue in Windhoek, the glaring Zimbabwean and Namibian flags lining the streets will not escape your attention.

A WhatsApp message has been circulating, inviting Zimbabwean residents in Namibia to go and meet president Emmerson Mnangagwa at one of the top hotels in the city during his three-day state visit this week. Suddenly, I grow a lump in my throat.

Does this president know why we are staying in a foreign land? So, he wants us to leave our hustle, and go and listen to his jokes? When I first came here 12 years ago, I was hoping, like a traveller hiding from sudden showers of rain, to stay a few years in Namibia, and go back home to Zimbabwe when the economy was friendlier.

You see, 2007 was a nightmare there, with basic commodities disappearing from shops, a situation which was made worse by political torture and disappearances. My son, who was in Grade 1 then, is about to go to university. Still, I and many people like me are in Namibia. We have borne the ridicule, the hustle for permits, and sometimes arrests and deportations with brazen stubbornness of those with little or no choice.

Today, the Namibian cake has grown smaller, and with its shrinking comes less tolerance for foreigners. I have watched bolder colleagues relocating to South Africa, Australia, the UK and Canada. For some of us who are greying, starting in a new country again may finish us.

The Zimbabwean situation has gone from bad to worse. The euphoria of overthrowing Robert Mugabe has quickly evaporated. A new wave of its citizens crossing the border into neighbouring countries already saturated with Zimbabweans is underway.

I don’t want to meet you, Emmerson. I would rather hustle for my children. I would rather not see you because I will shed my tears; tears of helplessness and desperation because of what you and your colleagues have put me in.

Still, we survive another day.

Battle-hardened Zimbabwean

Windhoek