09/09/2025
OPEN LETTER FROM A CONCERNED ZIMBABWEAN CITIZEN IN DIASPORA
To: ZANU-PF, ANC, ActionSA, Operation Dudula, and all political parties and leaders across Africa who claim to believe in Ubuntu or carry themselves as power horses of this world.
I write today not as a politician, not as a fighter, but as a broken African child, crying out for life, justice, and dignity.
I do not blame South Africans for everything they are doing in their land. Every nation has its children, every land has its rightful owners. It is your right to defend what is yours. But hear me: no one, not even governments or movements, has the power to shed blood simply because of belongingness. Human life is sacred. It is God’s breath.
Our governments have failed us. The ANC and ZANU-PF stand as partners in betrayal. They parade themselves as liberators, hiding behind the victories of the past, yet they did not fight for our generation. They are not feeding us hope—they are feeding us crumbs, while they share the cream, the cheese, and even the champagne.
South Africans, I understand your cry when you fight to claim waitering jobs or petrol attendant jobs—because your own government denies you the real professions, denies you opportunities to run thriving businesses, denies you the dignity of a future. Just as ZANU-PF denied Zimbabweans the right to jobs, to a livelihood, to life itself, until graduates, mothers, and fathers were forced to flee the only home they knew.
But I ask you—look around. Africa is full of foreign-owned businesses—Italian restaurants, Greek restaurants, French franchises, Asian chains. Many of you work for them, and our leaders even buy shares into their franchises. Why then is it a problem when an African opens a business and employs fellow Africans? Why then does my black skin, your brother’s skin, become a crime on African soil?
ANC—you know the truth. You profit from our suffering. You support ZANU-PF because together you loot the wealth of Zimbabwe. Was it not Mr. Ramaphosa who was the first to congratulate the disputed 2023 election, rushing to embrace the oppressor while Zimbabweans were still in tears? He was among the few heads of state who sat in celebration while we bled.
What do we, the ordinary Zimbabweans, have left? We are beaten at home, we are burnt abroad. Our women are dying at hospital gates in South Africa—denied the chance to give birth, mocked, recorded, laughed at while in agony. Our men are hunted down in the streets. Our children grow up fatherless, rootless, hopeless. Tell me, Africans, is this the Ubuntu we sing about?
History shows us that colonial powers were defeated only because Africans helped each other. But today, Zimbabweans are attacked by their own brothers and sisters. The hand we expected to lift us is the one that strikes us down. Who will help us now, when even our African family has chosen to fight on the side of our tormentors?
To those who say Zimbabweans are the problem, I plead with you: we are not the disease—we are the symptom. The disease is corrupt politics. The disease is ZANU-PF. The disease is the ANC that shelters and supports them.
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We are ready. We are tired of begging. We are tired of dying in silence. We are ready to return home and rebuild our country, our homes, our families. But how do we go back when the oppressors are empowered and protected by our neighbors? That is like escaping a dog only to enter the lion’s den.
Mr. Herman Mashaba, I know you understand this because you are a politician who has seen firsthand how power can corrupt. Mr. Ramaphosa, Mr. Mbalula, and all those who continue to destroy us—you cannot keep hiding behind slogans while burying generations.
Zimbabweans, my brothers and sisters, I cry as I write this. I want you to cry too—not in despair, but in awakening. We cannot remain scattered and silent. We cannot continue to die in pieces. The time has come for us to stand, to unite, to reclaim what is ours.
Our mothers are bleeding, our fathers are humiliated, our children are lost. Let us rise, let us wake, let us join the struggle—not against our fellow Africans, but against the chains that have bound us for far too long.
We are not foreigners in Africa. We are Africa.
Signed,
A Concerned Zimbabwean Citizen in Diaspora
