No one has any accurate figure for how many Zimbabwean citizens have fled their homeland since the turn of the 21st Century. The primary destination has been South Africa, yet the post-apartheid government is unable to or is incapable of producing any accurate statistics on population movements with its northern neighbour.South Africa 55.8%
Botswana 27.8%
Western Europe 18.4%
Mozambique 8.8%
North America 4.6%
Australasia & Pacific 4.1%
Zambia 3.6%
Malawi 1.5%
Tanzania 0.4%
Source: United Nations Migrant Stock database/SAMP
The publication of Zimbabwe’s Exodus – Crisis, Migration, Survival is, therefore, a welcome addition to the paltry list of factual books which provide a realistic background to the demise. More importantly this analysis dispels the claim that the country’s economic collapse stems from the so-called land reform programme forced on the population by the despotic Robert Mugabe and his sidekicks in 2000-2003.
Editors Jonathan Crush and Daniel Tevera have done a good job for Canadian publishers Southern African Migration Programme and the International Development Research Centre. Now we have a book whose 15 contributors spell out the historic, social and economic impacts migration have had upon the country for more than the last century.
The worldwide success of The Zimbabwean’s Trillion Dollar during the past year has helped to highlight the impact of foreign remittances from overseas back to families in Zimbabwe and how Mugabe’s corrupt regime illicitly latched on to this source of foreign currency.
Zimbabwe’s Exodus now provides 400 pages of analysis and data to explain how the one African state that could stand on its feet economically has been rendered impotent.
“Levels of poverty and chronic shortages of the basic necessities of life are such that remittance getting is a survival, not a development, strategy in contemporary Zimbabwe. The proportion of migrant remittances spent on food is amongst the highest in the world,” state editors Crush and Tevera, who add: “what is sometimes forgotten is that without remittances of food and cash to purchase food, the hunger and malnutrition situation in Zimbabwe would be even more dire than it has become.”
Post published in: Uncategorized