Zimbabweans applying for South African work permits in Johannesburg in 2010. Credit: Raymond June/flickr

By Sally Nyakanyanga
HARARE, Oct 19 2017 (IPS)

At the dawn of the millennium, Sheila Mponda, 60, waved goodbye to her four children, who were leaving Zimbabwe for the United Kingdom in search of greener pastures. Mponda had just lost her husband and had been a housewife all her life.

While the parting was bittersweet, since they established new lives abroad, Mponda’s children have faithfully sent her money to provide for her needs.“Slowly trust is being built between the government and the diaspora and enquiries from the diaspora associations have been coming in on how they can work together with government in national development.” --IOM Zimbabwe Chief of Mission Lily Sanya

“As a widow, people would expect me to live in abject poverty – with old age, no skills and a late husband.  But my children overseas have been a miracle,” she said.

They all hold down multiple jobs to sustain their families in the United Kingdom as well as back home. “[But] where would they be working [in Zimbabwe] with this current economy?” Mponda told IPS.

Dewa Mavhinga, the Southern Africa Director of Human Rights Watch, explained that family-level remittances from the diaspora are very important as they keep families in Zimbabwe afloat and mean the difference between survival and starvation for many.

“The collapse of the Zimbabwean economy due to poor governance has made it difficult for the government to harness funds from the diaspora and make good use of them for sustainable development,” Mavhinga told IPS.

He stressed the need for the government to restore public trust and confidence in its willingness to protect people’s investments in its effort to lure more funding from the diaspora.

Dr. Prosper Chitambara, an economist at the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), told IPS that remittances from the diaspora are only mitigating extreme poverty, serving as social protection rather than financing development.

‘The uncertainty in the country is affecting [it] to fully utilize and better harness remittances from the diaspora as no one would want to invest money in an unstable environment,” Dr Chitambara said.

He suggested the need for government to issue diaspora bonds, clarify the issue of dual citizenship and allow member of the diaspora to vote in elections.

“Government should engage people in the diaspora on how they can best work together for the development in the country,” Dr Chitambara added.

Last year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) together with the government of Zimbabwe launched the Zimbabwe National Diaspora Directorate to enhance engagement and participation of the Zimbabwe diaspora on national development.

IOM Zimbabwe Chief of Mission Lily Sanya said, “We encourage the government to get to know its diaspora by mapping their locations, compiling inventories of their skills and experience, and engaging a wide range of the diaspora in listening events to understand what the diaspora is willing to offer and what it expects from the government in turn, as this lays the foundation for good communication and mutual trust-building.”

IOM is currently implementing a project dubbed “Promoting Migration Governance in Zimbabwe”, which seeks to provide capacity to the government to better manage migration issues.

“IOM aims at creating platforms to promote dialogue between government and the Zimbabwean Diaspora for the latter to participate in governance and national development,” Sanya said.

In October 2016, IOM facilitated the initial diaspora engagement meetings for government in the UK, Canada and South Africa.

“Slowly trust is being built between the government and the diaspora and enquiries from the diaspora associations have been coming in on how they can work together with government in national development,” Sanya told IPS.

A skills transfer program has been put in place, where Zimbabwean experts abroad can come back home on short-term assignments to build the capacity and skills of local professionals in the health and education sector.

“IOM has also been assisting irregular Zimbabwean migrants in foreign countries to return home with dignity under IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration programme. They are supported to start small businesses of their choice to help them reintegrate into society,” Sanya said.

In addition, IOM aided the government to formulate its National Diaspora Policy and action plan for the 2017–2022 period.

“Support is being provided to government through the Ministry of Public Service Labour and Social Welfare (MoPSLSW) formulate the National Labour Policy which will ensure protection of the rights of Zimbabwean migrant workers abroad,” Sanya said.

For Zimbabweans in South Africa, the South African government has announced an extension of special permits for nearly 200,000 economic migrants by four years. This only applies to those already in possession of the permits, not new applicants.

“The government of Zimbabwe should make a fresh call for new applicants as there are likely more Zimbabweans undocumented in South Africa than those with special permits. This can help the government of Zimbabwe to document Zimbabweans and to place them in a formal tax role for them to contribute to the South African economy,” Mavhinga of HRW said.

The South African Minister of Home Affairs Hlengiwe Mkhize stressed that the extension was due to the worsening economic situation, but the permits are not a path to permanent residency.  As such Zimbabweans are expected to return home.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, more than one million people have sought asylum in South Africa. The majority of them are Zimbabweans, while others have come from Nigeria, Ethiopia and Mozambique, among other African countries. About 50-150 people are arrested each day as they attempt to renew their permits.

Speaking to the website Refugees Deeply, Gabriel Shumba, the director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, said, “We have visited Lindela Repatriation Centre and noted with serious concern that those arrested for deportation include those either attempting to apply for or renewing asylum and refugee status.”

Kisenyi slum, in Uganda’s capital, Kampala is believed to be home to a large portion of the country’s almost 12,000 Somali immigrants. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA, Mar 31 2014 (IPS)

On a Friday afternoon men wearing kamis — long white traditional robes — climb the steps to Somcity Travel, a small family business and travel agency in Kisenyi slum, in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The agency boasts that they “fly all over the world” but to one destination in particular — Somalia.

“In a day we may have up to five customers – four of them will usually be Somali,” says Mohamed Abdullahi, 25, the manager of Somcity Travel. The travel agency is situated opposite the the Al-Baraka cosmetic store and the Cadaysay shop, which provides mobile money transfer services and sells mobile phones and phone accessories.

“Some of them go [back] for holidays to Somalia. But they always come back. The business is kind of booming. We are booking a lot of tickets,” he tells IPS.

Kisenyi, informally known as Little Mogadishu, has been the heartbeat of the Somalia community in this East African country since the 1990s, according to Abdullahi.

But it was only in 2002 that businesses here started to take off. Today, Kisenyi’s streets are dotted with travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, petrol stations, supermarkets and other businesses — all of which are Somali-owned. And there is also a mosque.

“We are very tough when it comes to business, sometimes we can even challenge Indians,” Abdul Kadir Farah Guled, Charge De Affairs at the Somali embassy in Kampala, who came to Uganda around 1974, tells IPS.

“But our problem is our hot tempers. Sometimes we don’t like each other because of tribal conflicts. But at the end of the day, we support each other.”

Official statistics are hard to come by, but he estimates there could be up to 12,000 Somalis scattered throughout Uganda and that about 85 percent of Kisenyi’s population is Somali, with a large number of them being refugees and Ugandans of Somali-origin. It is believed that the slum could be home to over 4,000 Somali refugees.

The area is a place of transition for many — a stepping stone to a better life for many residents and workers.

“Somalis get respect from Ugandans and the government also supports Somalis,” says Abdullahi. Above his desk, a framed portrait of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni stares down at him. On the wall alongside it is a Brussels Airlines poster declaring “Africa, all wrapped up for you.”

Abdullahi used to live in Towfiq in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. In 2007, he left the Horn of Africa nation, along with relatives and friends, aged just 17.

“I came here to get an education and live a life [that is] different from [the one I lived] in that place where there is civil war,” he says.

Militants belonging to terrorist network Al-Shabaab were flushed out of Mogadishu in 2011 but still control many rural areas of the country today.

When Abdullahi came to Uganda, where his uncle, Ahmed, had resettled in 2003, he couldn’t speak English. In Somalia the official tongue is Arabic. But today Abdullahi converses impeccably in English and has completed both his O and A levels. Now he works six days a week at Somcity Travel, earning about 200 dollars a month.

“It’s getting better in Somalia but there are still some problems, like homes are bombed. There’s a problem walking at night.”

For most Somali’s coming to Uganda for the first time, the language barrier is a big problem says Shukri Islow, 28, the founder of NGO Somali Youth Action For Change. She founded the organisation to help empower Somalis here and bridge the gap between the two communities.

“When you know the language you feel a sense of belonging,” says Islow, who was born in Somalia and left the country when she was eight. She has lived in Sweden, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, before settling in Uganda in 2009.

“We give them that inspiration, motivation and empower them that they can do it it’s never too late, even if you’re 20.”

Today Islow, who graduated in November from Uganda’s Cavendish University with a bachelor’s degree in international relations and diplomacy, is the face of the Somali youth community in Uganda.

She also counsels  Ugandan African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) soldiers who are deployed to her homeland on how different Somalia is and what to expect when they get there.

Uganda was the first country to deploy troops under AMISOM to Somalia in 2007. A 22,000-strong AU force operates there under a United Nations mandate. Uganda leads the force, with 6,223 troops, but in early March said they would send up to 410 extra to guard U.N. facilities.

The last time Islow was in Somalia was in 2002 when the situation was “much, much better”.

“Right now you don’t know who’s going to kill you tomorrow, and you don’t know the reason. You’re being attacked for your lifestyle or ideology,” she tells IPS.

She’s aware that even if she returns home for a holiday she will be a target.

“I’m more at risk [from Al-Shabaab] if I go there because I’m all over social media and my pictures with Ugandan soldiers are [online],” says Islow.

She has relatives still living in Somalia and, eventually, she would like to return home permanently.

“Of course I’d like to go back because you go east and west, home is the best,” she says.

For the time being she will continue to live elsewhere and hopes to further her studies in Melbourne, Australia.

Abdullahi also hopes to do the same. He has an uncle in Australia and has enrolled in a management course that starts in July at a Sydney college.

“I want to continue with my education and at the same time work and have a new life, a better life, get married and have kids,” he says.

In January, the Somali Embassy in Uganda held its first-ever engagement with the Somali diaspora here to discuss the ongoing stabilisation and peace process in the Horn of Africa nation. Officials hope that educated youth, like Abdullahi and Islow, will return to help rebuild the country.

Already the diaspora has contributed much to Somalia. A 2011 report by the U.N. Development Programme estimates that the Somali diaspora is between one to 1.5 million people. The report stated that Somalis abroad provided much-needed humanitarian assistance back home through remittances – estimated between 1.3 to two billion dollars a year.

Last July, Air Uganda started direct flights from the country’s Entebbe International Airport to Mogadishu.

Abdullahi hasn’t returned to Somalia since he left. And if he does, like many of his clients, it may not be on a one-way ticket.

“Now I’ve adapted to this life of living abroad and some things are not favourable in Somalia so I can’t live there for good,” says Abdullahi.

Visvanathan Rudrakumaran, an attorney and prime minister in exile of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, in his New York City office. Credit: Samuel Oakford/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
NEW YORK, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

Seated at a desk piled high with court documents and yellowed newspapers, Visvanathan Rudrakumaran remembers leaving Sri Lanka and coming to New York for the first time, three decades ago.

“My friends and everyone else, they went to the UK,” Rudrakumaran told IPS. “But I chose to come here because I was interested in the Bill of Rights and I wanted to go and practice constitutional law in Sri Lanka."[The Tigers'] strength was always that they were the only ones that were capable of standing up to the government. This mythology gave them legitimacy." -- Gordon Weiss

“That was my goal when I left the country. But then the ‘83 riots changed everything.”

Today, when he isn’t representing clients in court, Rudrakumaran is the prime minister in exile of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE). By his window overlooking the Garment District is a small plastic plaque depicting the group’s logo, a wish-bone outline of what was, for a brief period in the 2000s, a de-facto state – “Tamil Eelam” – at peace in northern Sri Lanka.

Until their sudden and overwhelming defeat by government forces in May 2009, Rudrakumaran served as legal advisor to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the group’s supreme commander, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The conflict’s roots were deeply embedded in the historical treatment of Tamils by the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community.

From independence in 1948, Tamils and other minority groups were persecuted and deprived of linguistic and political rights by successive Sinhalese governments. The 1956 Sinhala Only Act came to represent Sinhalese dominance in all Sri Lankan affairs.

For the hundreds of thousands of Tamils who fled Sri Lanka after murderous anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 transformed simmering ethnic tensions into full-blown civil war, the erasure of Tamil Eelam and the LTTE left an existential void.

The ground the diaspora had stood on for three decades – the promise of return, and a guarantee of political rights and self-determination – was unceremoniously pulled out from under it.

“People are disillusioned and don’t have a clear direction,” admits Rudrakumaran.

Tamils in Sri Lanka and their supporters abroad have had to reimagine non-violent alternatives for achieving political and economic freedom on the island.

Yet the LTTE’s legacy can have a crippling effect on post-war reconciliation among fractious Tamil groups, let alone with the government itself.

Protesting Rajapaksa’s September speech to the General Assembly, Tamils gathered outside the U.N. held pictures of Prabhakaran, one telling IPS “Prabhakaran is still our leader.”

“The Tigers maintained an iron grip on diaspora politics,” said Gordon Weiss, spokesperson for the U.N. in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war.

“It was dangerous to be associated with anyone else. The Tigers were relentless with anyone who didn’t agree. Their strength was always that they were the only ones that were capable of standing up to the government,” Weiss told IPS. “This mythology gave them legitimacy. That disappeared.”

Funding the war from abroad

Part of the current dilemma Tamils both inside and outside Sri Lanka face stems from the outsized influence the diaspora maintained during the war. The LTTE was funded mostly not by sympathetic governments but instead by individuals living abroad, in countries like Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the UK.

Supporters established vast networks of clandestine and legitimate businesses and instituted informal but in effect mandatory taxes on many Tamil refugee communities in those countries, funneling money back into the war zone through shell companies and official charities.

By 2000, the LTTE could rely on wealthy members of the diaspora to donate millions of dollars through front organisations. The most prolific of their supporters was Raj Rajaratnam, the wealthiest Sri Lankan in the world and founder of the Galleon Group, a New York hedge fund firm.

Before he was arrested on insider trading charges in 2009, Rajaratnam gave more than 3.5 million dollars to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a charity whose assets were later frozen by U.S. authorities for ties with the LTTE.

While Tamils outside Sri Lanka were willing to finance the war, it was those still inside the country that bore its terrible physical burden.

The LTTE could uproot residents as it fit their military strategy, one that was notorious for the use of child soldiers and suicide bombings. The constant suffering and political uncertainty experienced by Tamils on the island contrasted starkly with the often comfortable lives of LTTE’s funders.

“Some would say that those who were able to leave Sri Lanka and go abroad and establish themselves tended to be better off and better educated and those from higher casts,” said Weiss.

The Sri Lankan permanent representative to the U.N., Palitha Kohona, himself accused of war crimes by Tamil groups in the U.S. and Switzerland, stressed this point in an interview with IPS.

“The word diaspora is a misnomer,” he said. “The vast majority [of Tamils] left voluntarily and many were economic refugees.”

Time and distance moved the diaspora in a more radical direction.

“A lot of Tamils in Sri Lanka are less nationalist than those in the diaspora,” said Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka Analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“If you look at diasporas around the world, they almost always end up being more radical in their demands than the home communities,” Keenan told IPS.

After 9/11, the LTTE found itself lumped into the global war on terror and Western governments began cracking down on its funding network. U.S. authorities classified the group as a terrorist organisation and froze their assets as various fronts were uncovered. The financial decline of the LTTE would presage their ultimate military defeat.

Engagement or resistance?

Central to the current plans of all Tamil diaspora groups is focusing international attention on alleged war crimes committed by the forces of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa in the final months of the conflict when, according to U.N. estimates, at least 40,000 civilians were killed.

The TGTE, though it recognises a military solution may be untenable, maintains that a separate state is the only outcome that can ensure a lasting peace and guarantee rights for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) scored a significant victory when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that in light of human rights concerns, he would not attend the November Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo.

The CTC, which represents the largest national group of diaspora Tamils, has spoken in favour of engagement in the post-war political process in Sri Lanka.

Despite reports of widespread voter intimidation, Sept. 21 Northern Council Provincial elections, the first in 25 years, saw the moderate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) win an overwhelming majority of the vote in Tamil-dominated areas.

In a press release published just before the vote, the Global Tamil Forum, of which the CTC is a member, stated it was “important that an administration run by the elected representatives from the region could play a significant role in restoring the confidence and dignity of our people.”

Immediately following the elections, a fight broke out over how the results should be interpreted.

In a September editorial, the Tamil Guardian, an influential British publication, called the council election “a vote for liberation” and sought to “dispel the often propagated notion of a dichotomy existing between the political aspirations of Tamils in the homeland versus those in the diaspora.”

“This was not a vote for the TNA. It was a vote for resistance,” the editorial concluded.

Part Two of this series can be found here.

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