#263Chat – Voices of Africa

(Pic: AFP)

I am a Zimbabwean and I have decided to leave the country! Yes, you heard that right, I have decided to leave the country!

But first things first.

My name is Jimmy, and I am an ICT professional (an Internationally Certified Computer Programmer). I have had my fair share of good fortune in Zimbabwe. I have worked for the financial services industry, from the stock market, asset management, to the banking sector. I have even worked for software houses that are into fulltime software development. Yeah, yeah, one can say I have prospered in the republic.

But why leave the beloved Republic of Zimbabwe?

I can promise you it has nothing to do with my hatred for this country or because I have always wanted to leave, or because some friend or relative has decided to send me a ‘ticket’.

No.

At this point I can only tell you of a few reasons why I decided to leave the beloved republic.

Trust me, I am patriotic to Zimbabwe. I love Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is in my heart.

After all, I have lived for over 30 years in the beloved republic. I was born here. I was raised here. I was educated here. My entire life has been in the republic. In fact, when all my peers and former school mates left I stayed because I was patriotic to the land. I saw a future where others couldn’t see one. I told myself that whatever we were going through as a country would soon come to an end and that in no time things would be better.

For a long time I didn’t even wish to get a passport. I didn’t see the need for one. I wasn’t going anywhere, and no one could convince me to step outside the borders of the republic.

And then most of my cousins started leaving.

Some of my friends left too. Within about two years or so of their leaving, they started sending us pictures of their nice cars, houses, the fancy restaurants, the food they ate … blah blah blah.

But that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t moved. I was a patriot. I loved my country. I was optimistic and very hopeful that in a few years things would change. I told myself that I too would one day, in the republic, drive a Range Rover.

But then things changed for me.

In short, allow me to say I married and along came two children. Life in Zimbabwe is something else once you start having kids and you need to feed them. Suddenly you need a two- or more bedroom house to rent. Of course in the republic we don’t buy houses, they are very expensive, and the banks are not giving mortgage loans.

Then came the 2012 elections. Then came the company closures. Then banks started closing.

Of course the factories have been closed for a while and I sort of winked at that because I worked for a bank. But when my bank started facing the liquidity crisis and closure I knew at once that no one was immune to the environment.

Then I started realising something about the republic.

No one cares for the public. We have dirty water in the taps and no one cares. We have erratic supply of electricity and no one cares. The roads are in shambles and no one is doing anything about it. Fuel prices go up and we can’t do anything about it. New taxes are introduced and we can only comply. Internet is very expensive. The public hospitals, the ones which we can afford, provide crappy service and people are dying because the nurses don’t care. I know because I watched my mother-in-law die at the hands of poor service delivery. And no one cares. Not them, not you, not the minister of health. No one. The company CEOs get treated outside the country now. But what about me? What about my kids?

Become an entrepreneur, they keep telling us. Start your own business. Create your own job.

But not everybody has dreams of owning or running a business. Some of us are just content to be the spanner boys and the foot soldiers. Some of us are content just doing our jobs and getting paid for it.

I don’t know about you but I am tired of the dirty tap water. I am tired of seeing all those potholes in a road. I am tired of sometimes available power supply. I am tired of walking the streets of a capital city that are infested with ‘bhero-stalls’ and cheap, crappy, Chinese products. I am tired of calling the national electricity department for a fault and they come 10 days later. I am tired of poor internet speeds. I am tired of expensive fuel. I am tired of working for ‘hand-to-mouth’ pay-outs. You can’t have savings accounts in the republic. Your bank could just close tomorrow. I am just tired of struggling for everything. Why does it cost me an arm and a leg to buy a flat-screen TV?

And guess what, my children have to grow up in such an environment and go to schools whose teachers don’t even know why they are doing what they do.

No.

I am sick and tired of it all.

Surely I wasn’t born to suffer. I just want a better life, that’s all.

And where am I gonna go?

Anywhere outside Zimbabwe.

Perhaps Botswana? Perhaps South Africa? (Wait, those guys don’t want us anymore). Perhaps Zambia? Perhaps Kenya? Perhaps Namibia? Take me anywhere where the visa application is not a hassle and I’ll gladly go.

Once again, my name is Jimmy and I am a Zimbabwean. I am an ICT professional and I am leaving Zimbabwe!

This post was first published on 263Chat.

The use of social media in Zimbabwe and amongst Zimbabweans in the diaspora is increasing all the time, especially between the two groups. We have tools like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to thank for this. The internet is still one of the few places where we can freely air our views with the advantage of anonymity.

Back in January 2012 I used the #Twimbos hashtag on Twitter and asked fellow Twimbos if they were interested in participating in a regular Twitter chat revolving around our beloved country. (Zimbabweans are commonly known as Zimbos; Zimbos on Twitter are therefore Twimbos.) I received a multitude of responses, but I was left a little unsure about it all so I shelved the idea. However, in late September, I embarked on what #263Chat has become to date. #263Chat evolved from a proposed fortnightly Twitter discussion on five different topics to the current format, which is a weekly discussion every Tuesday at 6pm CAT with one main focus. To gauge the Zimbabwean pulse on Twitter, search for the hashtag #Twimbos and #263Chat.

The #263Chat journey so far has confirmed many of my perceptions about fellow Twimbos:

We generally want to engage in discussion about Zimbabwe and/or Africa with other Zimbabweans and get an idea about what others are doing;
We often seek to maintain relationships with family and friends scattered across the globe;
Given our high literacy rate, we yearn to exchange ideas about other opportunities in business or generally about other Zimbabweans across the globe through robust discussion.

Why #263Chat?

I started #263Chat for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I love engaging with others. Secondly, I believe that to tackle any problem (and Zimbabwe has many), a conversation is the initial step. #263Chat was created to have that national conversation, but more importantly to crowd source solutions to challenges that we face in our own daily lives. I believe that local problems require local solutions. There are often solutions we can implement if we work together. Sometimes #263Chat is about gathering new ideas from Zimbabweans based all over the world or from those in different parts of the country. The topics are set by the community depending on the current issues of the week and they vary widely: we’ve discussed the recent referendum on the Constitution, as well as indigenisation, women and bullying.

(Graphic: Kenny Leung)

I suspect that some Zimbabweans don’t discuss issues openly, but issues we discuss in private regularly affect us all. We may know someone who has suffered from domestic violence or wondered how others feel about gay rights in Zimbabwe. The challenge is that we rarely discuss these issues with complete strangers. I have always thought that perhaps we are afraid of the consequences, whatever those are, so we believe talking won’t help. What I have since discovered with #263Chat is that there is a genuine need to talk as a nation, and not just on social media. We have issues we need to resolve! Not to suggest that we don’t already, but #263Chat taps into the minds of those in the diaspora and links them with someone living in Masvingo, for example. I believe creating that link is powerful. The exchange of ideas from that connection is ultimately why #263Chat exists and continues to grow.

Challenges

As expected, not every Twimbo is going to accept and/or participate in the conversation. Many view #263Chat as ‘all talk and no action’. Some have suggested that perhaps I set up this initiative as a way of entering politics or that I have some other hidden agenda. I find that quite amusing. Some are tired of talking and want to see visible change in society. I can understand that. I maintain that change is a process which takes time. If we band together, change is easier to implement. We can achieve simple things like teaching our kids about bullying or informing our helpers at home about registering to vote and what the referendum means in real terms. Simple things like that.

The future

Three weeks ago, we held our second #263Chat live event, which focused on tourism. We partnered with The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, NewsDay and C1rca 1964, and hosted the Zimbabwean tourism minister, Walter Mzembi, and the Zambian ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ndiyoi Mutiti. They, together with Barbara Joziasse, the Dutch ambassador to Zimbabwe, were keynote speakers. This event reflected an increasing awareness of the importance of social media in Zimbabwe and indeed how useful it can be in creating a space for much-needed dialogue.

Our website will be launching shortly, and more 263Chat live events will take place later this year including community initiatives such as ‘Adopt a School’. Meanwhile, our Twitter conversations continue – I invite every Zimbabwean online to join in!

Nigel Mugamu is founder and host of #263chat. Visit his blog and connect with him on Twitter.

Tag: #263Chat

I have decided to leave Zimbabwe