By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka
"The law if very clear about when refugee status might be revoked, and attending a meeting of ZANU PF UK and having your pictures illegally, shamelessly stolen and published by some partisan organisations or websites is not one of them"
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| ZANU PF UK has seen its membership grow as it continues with its all-encompassing, business and country building-oriented approach |
I recently
read an article written by a prominent website about Zanu PF agents crawling
out the woodwork and I felt my skin crawl. Not again!
Of course, in the society that we have created (and by this I mean
Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom), I fully expect that many ‘better’ people
will look at the by-line and condemn this article without so much as reading a
sentence. Such people might even put comments thereon, anonymized of course,
with no idea of what is being said.
Some, not in agreement with constitutionally permissible choices made by
the writer, which are also accorded to him under the European Convention on
Human Rights as read with The Human Rights Act, 1998, will gleefully append
comments about how poorly written this piece is, not rising to the standard of
a PhD student, conveniently forgetting of course that they are not my supervisor
and therefore need not receive PhD assignments on their internet device from
me.
Others, of the more insidious variety, will append vile personal attacks
the effect of which has been to incite violent outbreaks of laughter from
myself, and a slight sense of relevance. All in all, I expect that there will
be no shortage of internet trolls hiding under fake names to attack the truth.
Facts are stubborn.
Indeed, it is this same positively vile lack of goodwill to our fellow
man (and woman) that allows our society (as defined above) to delight in the
pain that is clearly being caused to a certain couple from High Wycombe by
those unfortunate videos, to denigrate Derrick Chisora’s achievements on the
basis that ‘he does not speak English very well and embarrasses “us” (really?
He embarrasses me not); it the very same mean-spiritedness that I witnessed in
11 hears as an immigration lawyer when you find relatives refusing to go to
court to testify on behalf of their relatives (‘ndinozotorerwa angu mapepa kana
nyaya dzikanosiyana,’ or ‘lawyer rako handiri traste’ being favourite excuses),
the same shayisano that sees a married man’s girlfriend calling the Home Office
to tell them that the man’s wife is working illegally at such and such a place
please go now and catch her; the same gunyengu that sees someone taking their
own cousin’s (bhudhi kana sis vekwa mainini) documents and faxing them to the
Home Office to prove that ‘paakati passport yakaraswa ne Zanu PF ainyepa’; the
same foolishness that pretends to understand things and goes around maligning
reputations based on half-baked knowledge.
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| ZANU PF UK Branch Launches and Business Meetings have been publicly advertised and open to all and have been attended by progressive Zimbabweans |
In fact, what I have witnessed in those 11 years would fill a book. So
bad is our record as a people that many a time, brothers from Nigeria, Guinea
etc would ask me ‘my broda, how is it that Zimbabweans can be so cruel to one
another that they can report each ada to da Home Office?’ Now, no-one is saying
that criminal activity should not be reported, but they are talking about
telling the Home Office that this person who has claimed asylum saying that she
was a teacher in Mutorashanga was in fact working for Chicken Inn in Harare,
and here are his severance papers to prove it (fact!).
I used to encourage my clients to try and get prominent MDC officials in
the UK to testify at their hearings, until l discovered in one case that the so
called witnesses were being paid up to £600 to come and say that the person was
active in the MDC. If those people won, and yet never attend any of the
MDC of meetings, are they refugees? Of course not.
Somalis give each other crib-sheets to cram all the information you need
to know about minority clans so as to win their cases, but Zimbabweans will not
help anyone with their case. Nigerians will happily marry their cousin to get
them status, but Zimbabweans will say ‘dont mention me in your case,
zvinozoklasha.’
Then when the relative loses (because Home Office knows you gave false
family details and the judge thinks if your own relative won’t come to say you
are telling truth why should l believe you), it is the zvonozoklasha relative
who is in the forefront of blaming Chinyoka, Yvonne Mahlunge, Mtisi or Madanhi
– vanongodhla mari dzevanhu! Ask any Zimbabwe lawyer in the UK how many
complaints they have had to the Law Society and you will learn that it is a few
too many. Ask the nationality of the complainants and be amazed that it is all
from Zimbabweans.
An Iranian will buy you flowers when you win their case and a Somali
will bring you some sweets that are, ehhh, too sweet(!), but a successful Zimbabwean
will say ‘haana chaakaita uyu, ndini ndakamuudza kuti tiise tsamba yeku Vigil
iye asingade.’
Not everyone is afflicted of course. I know a few, but I can only speak
for myself. It is not a secret that I am not Catsen Matewu’s favourite person,
in fact he calls me a ‘political reject’ every chance he gets, but that does
not stop me holding him out as an example to the youths I try and mentor as
someone that is clearly succeeding because he went to University and seems to
not suffer from a victim mentality.
Makusha Mugabe likely hates me, but I routinely use his references to me
as examples for other people to see how you can disagree with someone, tell
them that fact directly, and not be offensive about it. perhaps Casten and I
need to take lessons from Makusha!
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| ZANU PF UK Chairman Nick Mangwana has given numerous TV interviews before and after elections and the UK Chapter has been very visible and communicates with the British Gvt - What Crawling Out? |
But a few anecdotal examples do not a society make, and nowhere was this
aptly demonstrated that in the unfortunate story titled ‘Zanu PF agents crawl
out of the woodwork’. Agents? Crawl? Woodwork? You get the picture of some
trolls in dark glasses emerging like maggots from hiding, infesting this fine
society with their grime.
You see, language, and choice of words matter. The West is very adept at
using language to good effect, and it appears that we have learnt well. The
government of Syria is a regime, the ministers around Asad a ‘cabal’, the
criminals who toppled Yanukovich were revolutionaries while those that did for
Qaddafi were ‘rebels’, the killings attributed to the Inkatha Freedom Party at
the birth of a new South Africa were ‘black on black violence’ while the
killings by the IRA in Northern Ireland were part of a ‘sectarian strife’.
Now, I am sure we all want to be revolutionaries involved in sectarian
strifes where we are forced to fight for our rights, but once you become a
bunch of rebels trying to topple a junta headed by a cabal that sustains a
regime, you know you are not in Europe anymore. So, maggots crawling out of
some grunge, that is the picture you get of these Zanu PF agents.
Une gunyengu rakaita kuti nyimo dzifukwe, so said one of Gararirimo’s
wives in I.M. Zvarevashe’s masterpice, Kurauone. I swear that I until I came to
the UK and witnessed first hand what we Zimbabweans do to one another, I never
quite knew what that meant.
That is the same as talk of ‘agents crawling out the woodwork’. I did
laugh, then thought, kuseka nhamo kunge rugare. You see, some of the people
attending these Zanu PF meetings are very nice people, some quite funny; indeed
some of them bring their children, who run around making a mess of things and
dropping decorations or making noise while adults are talking: that is, things
that children do. These adults cracking jokes and kids being kids are many
things, but not agents. And given the asphalt jungles we live in, woodwork?
Surely?
Anyway, this is not a laughing matter. The report raises a serious
issue, and one that not only shows our bias towards bringing each other down at
all costs, but one that is flawed.
The law if very clear about when refugee status
might be revoked, and attending a meeting of ZANU PF UK and having your
pictures illegally, shamelessly stolen and published by some partisan organisations
or websites is not one of them. In the
next part of this article I will clarify the legal position regarding grounds
for revocation of refugee status.
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Tinomudaishe Chinyoka is a Lawyer, Prominent Former Student Leader, PhD Student and a Member of ZANU PF UK.
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