Why diversity is good for our country

The Zimbabwean

Our people need to understand that diversity is great for Zimbabwe. I am not just talking about accepting Whites or Asians or Chinese who in many cases have roots in our nation going back for generations. For these people, Zimbabwean is all they have ever known.

It is their home! If we manage to look past the wounds of the past, we can all acknowledge that the fabric of our great nation will be lesser without them. More importantly, I think we should embrace the diversity that comes with further immigration into our country now and in future years.

For many years, admittedly when the nation was still prosperous, Zimbabwe benefited from the influx of Malawian and Mozambican immigrants who came and did the jobs that most of us wouldn’t do for a day.

They tendered our gardens, herded our cattle, held menial farm jobs and spent countless hours in the dark shafts or our gold mines and our nation reaped the benefits of their sweat. In turn, our nation gave them excellent schools for their children, better healthcare and an opportunity to send money back home to help their families survive. Funny how the irony of history reminds us of how good we used to have it, but that’s a topic for another day.

National discourse

Our national discourse on this matter has been limited to sound bites that stereotype foreigners as bad and all white people as white farmers who stole our land. This not only ignores the facts but poisons our minds against a very crucial factor that will define how successful we will become as a nation in the 21st century.

Earlier in the year I was having a conversation with a friend. He is a British born white man (born in Dunstable, England) who chose to become a citizen of post-independence Zimbabwe. Having studied to become a librarian back in England, he worked for the University of Zimbabwe for many years and now runs his own media company.

An honest immigrant who deserves every success he has achieved. And yet, the colour of his skin proves a barrier to him moving up the ladder even after almost 30 years of being a Zimbabwean. An asset to the nation he chose and loves being hindered by superficial differences to all our detriment. That cannot be right!

A certain Mrs Keys was my English Language teacher. An expat and missionary from America who had fallen in love with the continent of Africa, spent years teaching in different African countries and eventually arrived at my high school. She was also the teacher in charge of scripture union in the school.

In the years that she taught me, she not only excelled as a teacher but more times than not was willing to sacrifice her own personal resources to make sure we had the best education possible. Thanks to her, I fell in love with the art of writing and reading comes as second nature to me which is weird for someone whose whole education focussed on sciences and business related subjects.

As you can see here, thanks to her, I turned out to be a pretty decent writer. Should the colour of her skin or the country of her birth negate the enormous contribution this remarkable woman has made to so many generations of children in Africa?

Learning curve
Our nation is only in its infancy in terms of development. Europe, Asia and most of the Americas  are way more advanced than us in every sense. They have been through what we are going through now already. The industrial revolution, rebuilding collapsed economies, managing national resources (like the Marange diamond fields) for the good of the nation and most recently the internet and other technological revolutions.

There is no doubt that our nation will benefit from engineers from Germany, IT and internet experts from the United States to cite a couple of examples. With their contribution, re-inventing the wheel becomes unnecessary. If we can tap experts from these more advanced economies, our nation can avoid the pitfalls of a learning curve and the painful process of learning from our mistakes.

Who among us can stand here and say Lubumbashi stars living and performing in Zimbabwe did not enhance our culture? You may disagree with their politics, but who is in any doubt that Senator David Coltart and Dr Faye Chung have added some value to the education of our children?

How can people like the British doctor I met at the Edinburgh Festival last week who spent five years working in our country be perceived as a bad thing for Zimbabweans on the streets of our capital? Surely, the contribution made by Mohammed Musa, the groceries wholesaler, is demonstration enough of how our nation benefits from this diversity.

The contribution of veteran journalist and former nightly news anchor Noreen Welch must mean something to us as a nation I reckon. Tell me, who will dare challenge the enormous contribution of the hardworking immigrants from Malawi and Mozambique in the 80s and 90s?

Poaching minds

America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth partly because they have embraced the strength of diversity. The United States has poached people of exceptional abilities from across the globe over the years including many of our exceptional countrymen.

Russian nuclear scientists, German engineers, British economists, Chinese wiz kids etc. Our very own deputy prime minister, Dr Arthur Mutambara,  worked for NASSA for years.

Hollywood is the movie capital of the world today because they embraced an attitude of accepting great actors no matter where they come from, the colour of their skin or the language they speak.

America is a country were a foreigner can become a citizen, a world renowned action hero, a businessman and eventually governor of the largest state in the country, all in one lifetime; not necessarily in that order of course. They are a perfect example of how to attract the best to help your country become better for generations to come.

While I can certainly understand why people fear what is different, all evidence points us to conclude that if we get past our anxieties our fears normally turn out to be wrong. To anyone with an open mind, the benefits of common sense immigration policies, diversity, inclusion and tolerance far outweigh the perceived draw backs.

If immigration is managed wisely, we will be richer as a nation because of it! If our nation draws on all the talents at our disposal from Zimbabweans of different races, religions, languages and political persuasions we will reap the greater benefits off it. Most importantly, if we become a more tolerant nation, we will handover to our children a nation more prosperous than what we inherited from our fathers.