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Home sweet home!

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AS Air Zimbabwe touches down at the Harare Airport, I am overwhelmed with emotions of sadness and happiness.

I am happy that I have finally come home after many years of life in the UK, and also after the long journey by road from Namibia to Zimbabwe via Zambia by bus.

I am sad because my father died two years ago and I have not been to see his final resting place.

This visit gives me the opportunity to pay my last respects to a man who brought me on planet Earth.

This is the price we pay for living in the Diaspora; parents, children and siblings die and we do not attend their funerals for various reasons.

I am engulfed with guilt conscience that I shed some tears which I quickly wipe out.

On the other hand, it feels so real to be in Zimbabwe that I want to kiss the ground (tarmac) and pay homage to home sweet home.

I collect my luggage and wait for my brother who comes to pick me from the airport.  

As we drive from the airport, I look around and notice that so many things have changed since I last came to Zimbabwe in 2010.

The road from the airport has been improved.

It has been dualised and also resurfaced.

There are too many cars on the roads, and very good cars for that matter! However, I also notice that the street lights are off, there is no electricity, something I easily get used to, and so quickly too.

The roads are clean, and the potholes I once noticed in 2010 have also been repaired.  

The election posters pinned on trees and on durawalls are a reminder of the recent harmonised elections.

I also see billboards advertising major brands such as Samsung, and everywhere there is a sign of development and progress.  

I take a sigh of relief as I feel happy to be home, home-sweet-home where people laugh and smile despite the hardships they have gone through.

They all agree that the worst is over and they look forward to a brighter future.

They want to put behind them a decade of economic and political quagmire; a decade of economic sabotage enforced to effect a regime change!

I also notice that there are new houses being built all over Harare, a sign of resilience and hard working.

In most Western suburbs, there are sprinklers watering lush green lawns and flowers. 

On my second day I go to the city centre to visit friends.

There is also evidence of major improvements since I last came here. Some of the road names have been changed to reflect the mood of revolutionary movement and independence.

For example, ‘Second Street’ is now ‘Sam Nujoma’.

The spirit of change and Pan-African movement is evident across many African countries.

The President of Zimbabwe officially opened the Robert Mugabe Way in Malawi, something which angered the West, especially those who funded the construction of the road, but African economic and political independence is something which the West can no longer afford to take for granted.  

Most African countries have moved on.

The evidence is everywhere in Harare.

They no longer want to be dictated on.

They have learnt lessons from Zimbabwe’s struggle for economic independence.

They have seen the benefits of trading with the East.

The tables have turned.

The Western block angova matakadya kare asinganyaradze mwana.

In Zimbabwe madhongi arikukuma ngoma dzichirira.

President Robert Mugabe is an African hero, a hero for all Black people, which is why he receives applauses and standing ovation wherever he attends official events in Africa.

We saw it in Kenya at the inauguration of Uhuru Kenyatta.

We also saw it in South Africa, and recently at the Southern African Development Community meeting in Malawi, where the crowd was ecstatic at the mention of his name, so much so that the President was made to stand up twice to a standing ovation.

Harare is developing and expanding at a very fast rate.

The Chinese are building shopping malls.

There is one near the National Sports Stadium, which is almost complete.

People are happy that the elections are done with and over.

However, people share different views on the future of Zimbabwe, some are skeptical about future development.

These blame ZANU PF for Zimbabwe’s past economic problems.

I hear this mostly coming from the middle-class community most who strongly feel that their standards have deteriorated dismally.

Others think that the new ZANU PF government will deliver, and that the party and its Government have learnt from past mistakes.

The majority of people I talk to strongly believe that sanctions played a role in the country’s economic crisis, and that the removal of sanctions is long overdue.

Many people, including MDC supporters, agree that Tsvangirai would never have made a good leader, and that he was not ‘presidential material’.

Many young people tell me that they want to go to the UK or Europe to work.

They think the UK is paradise, but I tell them that there is no green grass in Europe, that the grass is brown at the moment.

They do not believe me.

They have been made to believe that in the UK money is everywhere, it litters the streets.  

I tell them how people work so hard, doing shift work, at the expense of family life and values to earn money.

I am invited by Dr Vimbai Gukwe Chivaura to be a panelist on his programmes African Pride and Zvavanhu.

He wants me to share my experiences in the UK with Zimbabweans here.

I accept.

I tell viewers about my first job in the UK, when I worked on a farm picking onions.

I tell them (viewers) about how Zimbabwe trained medical doctors and accountants work in hospitals not as doctors or accountants, but as care assistants!

I tell them how some young men earn a living by providing adult services to old white ladies.

I explain how difficult it is to raise children in the UK and how young black youths engage in knife and gun crime.

I also tell the audience about how very easy it is for our young black youths to graduate from Her Majesty Prison Services (HMPS).

I tell them that my son has walked that road and graduated from HMPS two years ago.  

I tell them all this with the hope that our young people will take heed. Chiri mumusakasaka chinozvinzwira! 

It is good to be home after so many years in the Diaspora.

My friends in the UK send me messages everyday asking me about opportunities available for them in Zimbabwe.

They want to come home because they are tired of working like slaves in the UK.

Yet many young people in Zimbabwe want to go to the UK.  

Many people tell me that they want the new government to focus on infrastructural development: electricity, water and health care.

I am happy that things have improved.

If the European Union and its allies remove the remaining sanctions, Zimbabweans both home and abroad have better prospects for a great life ahead.

The evidence is already there and everywhere.

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