I was asked to take part in a panel discussion the other day on a local radio station with the subject being the role and behavior of the local white community. They had asked several people to come and represent the community and got no takers but I have a policy of not avoiding such opportunities. I am hardly representative of the white community in Zimbabwe as my personal political views have been at variance with the views of the majority of whites in Zimbabwe for many years. But I am white, I am an African and I and my family live in Zimbabwe.
What had inspired the programme was a recent move by some 3000 white Zimbabweans to get together to demand the lifting of sanctions on the leadership of Zanu PF in Zimbabwe as well as certain restrictions by the USA on financial transactions. The producer/presenter wanted to know what had inspired this move. I was joined by the mother of two boys (black) on the programme whose children went to a local, exclusive, private school and had experienced racism and bullying at the school.
Nearly all Zimbabweans are migrants - the Shona people moving here after about 1200 AD, the Ndebele arriving in strength after about 1830, the whites from about 1700 (Portuguese and others) and the Anglophile migrations starting after about 1850 in the form of missionaries, hunters and adventurers. We all come from somewhere else.
In my own case my great grandfather arrived in the Eastern Cape in 1867 as a Baptist missionary - a great character who made an impact on South Africa during his life. Then my own grandfather who in turn became a prominent citizen, playing an important role in the South African government first as Chief Magistrate of the Union of South Africa, then as the Chairman of many important State agencies. In the great depression my father was forced to relocate from Cape Town to Bulawayo in Rhodesia in order to find work. I was born in Bulawayo several years later, my mother having emigrated from Canada.
White Africans in Africa come from many parts of the world. In South Africa the majority has Dutch and French origins, later migrations brought English settlers and these were followed by German settlers. In Zimbabwe 40 per cent of the settlers came from Scotland, another significant minority were Afrikaners from South Africa. In Mozambique and Angola, Portuguese were the dominant settler community. In Kenya, British settlers dominated although most of them regarded England as "home" unlike the settlers in Southern Africa who rapidly came to regard themselves as nationalist and loyal to their adopted States.
When Independence came, the different countries with a significant settler population adopted different policies. In Kenya they were dealt with, compensated and by and large withdrew. In the Portuguese colonies the decision was taken to drive them out and this resulted in a massive exodus from Angola and Mozambique despite "assimilation". In Zimbabwe the settlers were dislodged by a military campaign supported by international pressure and following Independence in 1980, the white population declined rapidly from a peak of about 280 000 in 1977 to barely 50 000 today.