Australia deports eight students whose parents have links with Zanu-PF

“The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons”

This Biblical phrase was top of my mind today when I read about how the Australian government has deported 8 students whose parents are linked to Zanu PF.

Reports indicate that police commissioner Augustine Chihuri’s son Sylvester, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono’s twin daughters Pride and Praise and son Peter were among those deported. Rural Affairs and Housing Minister Emerson Mnangagwa, Economic Planning Minister Sylvester Nguni, Provincial Governor David Karimanzira, Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo and Science and Technology Minister Olivia Muchena all had their kids deported. (via SW Radio Africa)

This follows a campaign started by ZimDaily.com - go over there and read the comments left by its audience after hearing the news. These comments caught my eye:

“Where is that cabinet minister who was calling us the toothless cyberspace electorate. We are not so toothless now are we?”

“Just in time for the UZ calendar. Hope they will enjoy learning under Levi Nyagura, else they have to learn Chinese fast to get a place there.”

“it is all good that these kids are back home, they should immediately register as voters so they can participate in our democratic elections that are just at the bend or even lead the zany pf campaign. to that end they should shun the uz and instead enroll at border gezi youth training university which will educate them fully on the history of zimbabwe, which apparently they did not have the chance to learn coz they were sipping champagne and learning Australian history.”

It’s not difficult to understand their delight at hearing this news, but there is an unavoidable ethical dimension too. We don’t know these children, and do they deserve to be punished for what their undoubtedly corrupt and dubious parents have done?

Giving them the best benefit of the doubt that I can, I imagine myself in their shoes. If my father was deeply involved in the Gukurahundi, as Manangagwa was, I’d feel deep shame. It would devastate me to think my father had a hand in something so evil. It is possible that I’d want to leave the country and get as far away as I possibly could from him - somewhere like Australia - and try to begin my own life. Is it fair that I have to pay for what he did and continues to do, given I find it unconscionable?

However …

My Zimbabwean instincts, after witnessing the bottomless endless spiral down to despair and painful poverty, and the empty rhetoric from Africa leaders, and hand wringing from the West, mirrors those of the readers of ZimDaily.com.

I find it hard to believe these young people are funding their own educations. I suspect it is being funded by the Zimbabwean tax-payer, and I find it hard to swallow the fact that while they enjoy great educations in safety and freedom, their peers in Zimbabwe are being beaten and bashed, probably with the approval of their fathers.

I find it sickening to think of all that money going towards their educations, while their fathers impose economic measures that increase poverty in Zimbabwe and put mothers in a situation where they cannot feed their own children.

It appalls me that they have a great education, while Zimbabwean teachers are intimidated by the security forces in Zimbabwe.

I can give you the talk about justice, but there is no doubt that I am personally pleased that this has happened. I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I wish these young people had made it easier for Zimbabweans to respect them, by standing up for justice in Zimbabwe and loudly adding their voices to those who are fighting for freedom and justice in Zimbabwe. I wish they had stood against their fathers, and used their influence to set them straight. I wish I could find it somewhere in my body to pity them. But I can’t.

Regardless of that fact, I have to come back to this: “The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons”. If I put all my human anger aside, if I overlook the clear and glaring unfairness of their privileged status in the context of Zimbabwe and I try to be as dispassionate as I can be, this is a concept that does not sit easily in my mind with justice.

One of the things I have learned to like about being Zimbabwean is that I live in a county which tests my ethics and my principles. I know what my values are, because they have been tested, and I have had to make hard choices. And as a result, I have acquired a great sense of knowledge about who I am as a person in a short space of time ( I think most people have a life to learn this, we cram it into a few hard years). Sometimes I feel I have overcome a great hurdle; other times I am very disappointed in myself.

For example, ours is a country where, when a person comes to you and says ‘I am starving’ and asks for bread, it is quite possible that if you don’t give them bread they WILL starve. In other countries you can avert your eyes and mumble, ‘no, I’m sorry’, and walk away with some mild assurance they will ask the next person, and the next person, or go to a soup-kitchen.

I have argued with foreign friends that although they believe they have certain principles, and they may argue them with all their heart, they don’t know that they really do until they have been tested, and they have managed to stand strong in the face of the easy alternatives.

In Zimbabwe we are tested all the time, we are at the coal-face of ethical dilemmas every single day. It’s a tough way to live, and the choices are unbelievably difficult.

This issue with the deportations is one ethical issue where I find myself crumbling. My head tells me that to make these kids pay for their father’s crimes is wrong; my heart wants it to happen, my heart is glad it is happening. My heart is winning and I don’t feel 100% comfortable with that.

So today I am struggling, and today I find myself at that point again where I don’t fully know who I am.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Australia, deportations, students, education, university, Manangagwa, Gono, Chihuri, justice, ethics

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