Where were you in 2008? The birth of a new Zimbabwean psyche

By Tsungai Chipato

Nursing his Hieneken whilst watching Premier Prentice announce a snap election; as a referendum on his Conservative party’s proposal budget of weaning Alberta off its dependency on tar-sands oil, as a revenue stream. I could tell that *VaSibanda had given up on Zimbabwe and was slowly coming to the realization that he was going to die in Canada.

Sitting across from Engineer*Sibanda in his upscale downtown Calgary condominium; I could sense the disgust he unknowingly showed every-time he mentioned his failed business endeavors whilst having lived in Zimbabwe for a year.

 

For *VaSibanda, the 2008 financial crisis and how it had ruined him, had been the transitional period when he had given up on North America and had decided to move from Michigan USA, to Alberta Canada; in order to rebuild his life.

 

Working part-time night shifts at Walmart and Home Depot; so as not to saddle himself with too much student debt, he reconverted his educational background in finance; into a solid engineering career where he slowly rose in Alberta’s oilfields becoming one of the many prominent and successful Zimbabweans found in the province of Alberta.

Nevertheless his mind had always had one goal after having lost everything throughout that 2008 recession, and that was returning to Zimbabwe and settling down for good in his homelands. 

Ko…., “Sekuru” What Happened in Zim? 

“Mupfana, they are against diaspora their mentality is different from us nobody kumusha is on your side, pane zvakaitika kwavari in 2008”.

 

*VaSibanda said this as he explained to me how he had lost over US$40 000, implementing a failed agricultural project he had tried to create in his traditional homelands.

 

Sitting in his plush living room; observing how successful he was in his own right within Canada, his unhappiness was still palpable.

Anybody watching and listening to *VaSibanda, would have come away with one singular question which was: Why were successful middle class Diaspora Zimbabweans having such a difficult time investing in Zimbabwe?

 

Where were you in 2008? 

In 1975 whilst Zimbabwe was still in the grips of Chimurenga or fast forward to 1982 when the Zimbabwe Government accused Joshua Nkomo of planning to overthrow the administration, right up till 1991 when Zimbabwe was undergoing austerity measures, during all these years, across the ocean in America, the Federal Reserve had cut interest rates, and increased their budget deficits due to their own markets undergoing various recession cycles.

Why this would have been of no concern to you as a Zimbabwean is simply because you; would have not been able to connect your own personal life to a recession going on in some foreign country.

 

The year 2008 changed everything, with the global world experiencing its first globalization crash, having the internet explaining in real time how this global butterfly-effect affected us. We now are aware of how much other voters in distant lands could ruin us. Having a shared experience as a global community, if you go anywhere in the world you will somehow have a shared experience of hard times, from this time period.

 

The world went through a traumatic experience in which every individual on earth was affected in some shape or format, by the financial crisis. On a micro-level understanding the differences between how a Zimbabwean local underwent this trauma compared to that of a Zimbabwean in the Diaspora should be the first place to search for answers to how we now find ourselves in this situation for 2015.

 

 

Why Is 2008 Our Ground Zero? 

When a psychologist or psychiatrist is looking for signs of trauma they are trained to look out for symptoms such as; (a) a highly pessimistic attitude towards oneself, others or the world, (b) memory loss regarding details of the said trauma, (c) blaming oneself or others for the trauma due to distorted beliefs about its causes and consequences, (d) an ongoing fear of reliving the trauma, or (e) lack of interest or motivation participating in long term activities or projects.

Listing the symptoms above, readily found in any psychiatric or psychology journal, it is disturbing to find that these are the same issues brought up by Diaspora people who return from visiting Zimbabwe. Why?

 

In 2008 Zimbabwe went into the flight or fight response, with citizens choosing how to manage their lives along these two options, however a third option existed known as tonic immobility, whereby citizens transformed into an altered state of consciousness no longer feeling fear, with time and space moving slower to them as well as a new found inability to respond to pain or horror.

Unlike fleeing or fighting, according to psychologists tonic immobility has a side effect of destroying the ability of an individual to feel or understand shame, guilt or empathy, which is where we find ourselves today in 2015.

 

The manner in which Zimbabwe is viewed by a entrepreneurial Diaspora Zimbabwean eager to invest, is formed against the backdrop of this new attitude they encounter whenever they visit Zimbabwe.

Long having accepted and willing to deal with the inadequacies of the political administration or its slow bureaucratic machine. Very few in the media have dedicated time or resources, into understanding the people themselves; and how difficult and frustrating it is to deal with a Zimbabwean local.

 

 

What Is The Perceived Psyche Of A Zimbabwean local? 

Zimbabwe as a nation for all intent and purposes, has had its amygdala damaged, whereby they are impassive when confronted with threatening events just as when they are experiencing pleasant events, to their psyche as a nation its the same feeling.

The ability to emotionally assess situations for their emotional significance has been damaged which inadvertently has affected the decision making and interactions they have with the world at large, including fellow Diaspora Zimbabweans who were not there; with them at that nation changing moment.

 

According to Stephen Joseph Ph.D in Psychology and author of the book “What Doesn’t Kill Us”. “In normal circumstances, memories are filed away as representations of past events, But following trauma, they remain in an active state-and thus seem to float in the present. At the same time, they are difficult to talk about coherently”.

 

This quote explains why foreign based Zimbabweans all have the same variant story of having been dismissed in conversations or debates, by local Zimbabweans because they were absent in Zimbabwe during 2008 or its aftermath, somewhat in the same manner that; war veterans have little patience for people who never fought or contributed in the liberation struggle.

 

What many Zimbabweans in the Diaspora fail to remind themselves when dealing and interacting with local Zimbabweans is that after 2008, Zimbabwe changed and began to have a post-traumatic growth that nobody had experienced before; beside possibly pre-independence generations, within Zimbabwe.

 

 

What Does This Mean To The Diaspora Investor? 

The trajectories of Zimbabweans outside of the country during 2008 and of those who stayed in the country will never be able to align psychologically for the foreseeable future. In 2015 we now have two versions of a Zimbabwean identity residing in our global community, both of which seem to be having a difficult time growing to understand each others differences based on what happened from the aftermath of 2008.

 

This disconnect is painfully obvious, with Zimbabweans in the Diaspora showing bitterness or frustration on how dealing or investing in Zimbabwe is so difficult regardless of the politics.

Already ahead of the curve on realizing that in a globalized world sub-Saharan Africa is on the verge of becoming a booming emerging market, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora want to be involved in this wave.

The fact that Africa has not yet completely converged and adapted into the global market makes it one of the last places globally; where opportunity can be easily found for anyone in the West stuck in financial poverty and looking for a way out.

 

If you ask any astute economist or a regular African in the diaspora what the number one biggest obstacle to making money in Africa is? The answer will somehow always end up being infrastructure or the people themselves as the problem.

 

Observing *VaSibanda as he finally took a sip of his beer, unhappy at having to show up for work that following Monday due to his failure in Zimbabwe, the need for more outreach from the government to diaspora communities as well as stronger diaspora organizations became apparently clear.

 

Although within Canada there are now established organizations such as ZCUSA {Zimbabwe Cultural Society of Alberta} in Alberta, or ZCSG {Zimbabwe Canadian Support Group} in Ontario; they are still at their growth and development stages, still building their organizations; at a time when Zimbabwe needs more investment,which can be sourced from within Zimbabwean Diaspora communities.

 

As Zimbabweans in the Diaspora become increasingly more established and successful, the scarcity of selfless; motivated leaders and community organizers will continue to slowly drive affluent Zimbabweans such as *VaSibanda away from the community and disappear into the Western fabric only to be shipped back to Zimbabwe for a burial. 

* : names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individual 

Tsungai Chipato is a Journalist based in Toronto. Canada and he can be contacted at [email protected]