What Does It Mean To Be A Zimbabwean Immigrant?

What does it mean to be a Zimbabwean Immigrant navigating through life before your time in University is expired? After graduating, the “international” student is thrown into the streets without realising what their next step is going to be.

This brings about deep thinking about the fact that Universities to some extent, are no longer serving their fundamental purposes with regards to equipping students with life skills and professional development. In this digital age of LinkedIn, one comes to understand that the global employee-employer relationship is slowly paying a blind eye to the principles of attaining an employment opportunity solely by virtue of academics.

The currency that is being used in today’s language is “who do you know?” and “how are you going to make that prospective employer richer?”

Freedom is free to dream, however, it is attainable at an expensive price. A total equivalent exchange will be an “arm and a leg” or “a gallon of warm fresh human blood”, or a soul or two of the African in order to realise that “African dream”. However, is the “African dream” even alive or it’s another fool’s gold race that is handed to every African? The dream is no different from the American dream that states “If you work hard, extra hard you will get what you desire”.

With the advent of the global recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Africans are slowly being prepared for the shock of their life. In 2008 a lot of people were stranded, in some cases, Zimbabweans had to learn that all of their savings and pensions were wiped away overnight and yet the landlocked country’s youth seem to be suffering from a never series of Stockholm syndrome that has resulted in the political elite and their offspring living a large life at the expense of the masses, alas a typical “Animal Farm” situation  –“all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”.

Getting a foreign education is the only way out for the Zimbabwean Immigrant. Some tend to buy time in University and figure out their talents while there is still time so that when they graduate, the talents and the degree attained will complement each other, birthing a purpose that is driven by a skill fueled by desire.

After surviving a series of wars in our political history, a typical Zimbabwean immigrant gets to begin another war – a never-ending war and that is the war of life, at least with respect to making a decent living. In understanding how junta governments operate especially in volatile states such as Zimbabwe, the parting question would be “are African universities performing at a three-hundred-sixty degree lens or they are operating at a blinkered view”? How are our universities preparing us to become useful and productive citizens of our country?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Written by: Nyamutsamba Ivianashe

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.