How Zimbabwe’s Refugees Help Robert Mugabe

Note:  This article was first published on April 7 in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph:

(by David Blair, April 8, 2008, Telegraph.co.uk) Johannesburg – As he lays out a selection of giraffes and elephants made of wire and beads, Obert Gomba seems indistinguishable from any other street vendor in South Africa.

Yet Mr Gomba and millions of others like him provide the single most important explanation for how President Robert Mugabe has managed to hold power despite the catastrophe overwhelming Zimbabwe’s economy.

Mr Gomba is a Zimbabwean migrant who fled his collapsing homeland for neighbouring South Africa five years ago. Of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people, at least three million now live abroad, according to an official estimate from Mr Mugabe’s regime.

advertisementAt a stroke, this mass exodus on a scale usually created only by civil war has deprived Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, of hundreds of thousands of votes. Without this outflow of people, Mr Tsvangirai would almost certainly have won a clear outright victory in the first round of the presidential election, instead of the 49.1 per cent of the vote his party estimates he received.

“It’s obvious who I would have voted for,” said Mr Gomba. “I would have backed Tsvangirai. If Mugabe goes then we can get back home. Life is better back home.”

Mr Gomba now earns a meagre living as a street vendor in Johannesburg. Perhaps two million Zimbabweans are thought to have settled in South Africa, stirring great resentment among the host population.

“Some South Africans are OK, but others say ‘you Zimbabweans, we don’t want you here, you are taking our jobs’,” said Mr Gomba. “There are some places where it’s not safe for us to stay.”

After South Africa, Britain is the most popular refuge for Zimbabwean migrants fleeing their worthless currency and inflation exceeding 100,000 per cent. At least 500,000 now live in Britain, according to a recent estimate from Paul Boateng, the British High Commissioner in South Africa.

By sending money and food to their relatives, this immense diaspora keeps Zimbabwe’s economy alive.

Every month, Mr Gomba sends about £50 and a few bags of groceries to his wife, Charity, and their two sons in the Zimbabwean town of Chitungwiza.

Bus drivers plying the route between Johannesburg and Harare have now become trusted couriers. In return for 20 per cent commission, they take envelopes full of cash and bags stuffed with food from Mr Gomba and his fellow migrants and hand them to their families in Zimbabwe.

“Without this, my wife would not survive,” said Mr Gomba. “Things are very tough for her.”

Migrants living in Britain pay for groceries, generators and furniture over the internet using websites like Zimbuyer.com. Their relatives then collect these items in Zimbabwe.

Despite the destruction wrought by his regime, Mr Mugabe can rest assured that Zimbabwe’s economy will be saved from total collapse by this support from the diaspora.

Hostile voters have left the country, while money and goods pour back in. Mr Gomba acknowledged that all this helped Mr Mugabe. “It’s true,” he said. “But what can we do?”

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