I am a Zimbabwean. Yes - I may have been born in the United Kingdom, but I was but an infant when my family left to live in (then) Rhodesia. I grew up in Africa, have a strong African accent (which I refuse to lose), and an understanding of life that only Africa can instil.

Steve Kekana (the South African reggae singer) one sang, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, As long as you’re a black man, You’re an African” - I see a little beyond those lines - if you think like an African, you are an African.

Growing up in Africa was an experience within itself. We were presented with the realities of life (and death) and had God’s playground as a backdrop.

I found the people in Africa - be they black or white - to be good, wholesome, God-fearing people - apart from the few, who unfortunately seem to float to the top, from where they issue life’s most horrendous experiences.

Many of my friends that I left in Zimbabwe were black, and indeed, many of them have subsequently left as well, no longer able to tolerate Mugabe’s rule, no longer to live without jobs, transport, money, education and medical services.

Many of those that have left, arrive on foreign shores, emaciated, weak, sick and penniless. And the vast majority of thee people are professionals - accountants, health workers, company owners and directors.

If this is what has become of the affluent, what of those that have neither the money nor the means to escape Mugabe’s treachery?

They are destined to live on nothing, because they have nothing.

Years ago, many of the population were rural dwellers and were largely subsistence farmers – living an almost hand-to-mouth existence. But it must be said that they were some of the fittest and most literate subsistence farmers this world has ever seen.

A testimony to what the country once was.

Mugabe began ripping the country apart as long ago as the late 1960s, and he hasn’t stopped since.

But how does this auger for the future?

The rebuilding of Zimbabwe will only be completed long after I am dead and gone. Mainly because it cannot get underway until Mugabe and his loyalists are removed from power (one way or the other) and placed behind bars where they belong.

Zimbabweans are not inherently violent or militant people. Neither are they people that hold a grudge.

They only ask that they can live in peace, support the political party of their chosing and are allowed the dignity to provide for their families as most people elsewhere in the world are permitted to do.

And when they life standard to stripped to abject poverty, disease and destruction, then we must forgive the anger, the unhappiness brought about by the continued tenure in office of one man who live in exaggerated opulence whilst the country starves.

This is not a call for civil unrest or a public uprising. This is a call for the free world to shake their heads because their eyes are stuck…

Zimbabwe can only begin the road to recovery once the threat of their ‘leader’ has been removed – once and for all.

Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man