The Mutare-born Kubikwa, hounded into exile by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) supporters in 2004, still shudders at the mere mention of continuing political intolerance and economic decline in his home country.
“When I arrived here, still fresh from those threats on my life back home, I found an exiled population of Zimbabweans struggling to cope in a foreign land that did not recognise their existence,” he says of the time when the then South African leader, Thabo Mbeki, refused to accept that there was a crisis in Zimbabwe that warranted the granting of refugee status to those who had fled.
“Even those who had found ways to beat the challenge and established themselves would not dare represent their own because they feared being victimised by the system, but something had to be done and done quickly,” he told The Zimbabwean this week.
Kubikwa and a number of fellow exiles, most of them activists of the Movement for Democratic Change, galvanized their efforts to form ZIPOVA in the same year he in South Africa.
“People were being arrested and deported back to the ‘war zone’ and we could not just sit back and watch, so we decided that if somebody had to save us, that would be ourselves. There were very few organisations willing to stand up for Zimbabweans in this country, so the demand for ZIPOVA membership was phenomenal,” he said.
With other activists, who included Joshua Mambo Rusere, Kubikwa drove the establishment of the new organisation, which quickly raised the bar in representing Zimbabwean political and economic victims.
“We were mainly concerned with political victims who faced death when they were deported back home, but the millions of others who had come here in pursuit of economic survival also needed someone to represent them, so we did not leave anyone out.
“Because of the cumbersome local system, it took us a while to get ourselves registered, but when we finally were, we hit the ground running and rose to 3,000 members within a short space of time. It showed us that we were right in thinking that Zimbabweans were a lost flock without representation in this country,” added Kubikwa.
ZIPOVA renders humanitarian assistance, paralegal work, advocacy, access to health services, access to banking services, facilitates street trading and litigation for Zimbabweans in need.
“We have represented many women who have had their new-born babies suspiciously die in hospitals, or those who have reported abuse by local health staff. We work hand-in-glove with Lawyers for Human Rights, who have done a tremendous job for our members,” added Kubikwa, the last born in an ordinary Mutare family of seven. He does all that because he is driven by a dream to make good the future of his country, when democracy and good governance finally prevails.
“Nothing can boil forever and some day, Zimbabwe will be free and ready to welcome its exiled population. But we don’t need that returning population to be made up of beggars, vagrants, thieves, prostitutes and redundant people,” he says with conviction.
“We need a returning population of experts, businessmen and women, professionals and success-driven individuals that will quickly drag the economy back to the top, where it belongs. That is where our skills training workshops come in handy.”
He castigated foreign-based Zimbabwean businessmen who overlook the Diaspora in their various sponsorship initiatives.
“Instead of having a quota for their exiled brothers and sisters, you find the businessmen sponsor only those based in Zimbabwe in academic matters, as if the Diaspora does not exist. The displaced should also be looked into in such issues, because they are usually the ones at a greater disadvantage,” he said.
With dreams of returning home one day, Kubikwa described an environment he would most love to live in when that time finally comes: “A leadership that does not succumb to pressure from certain sections of society, a country ruled on democratic values, with people who accept that political, social and cultural diversity can only make us stronger and a governance system that does not discriminate on tribal lines.”
Post published in: Africa News