Award-winning Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga has said most Zimbabweans would leave the country at any chance but are staying as they do not have the means to.
She said those who can’t leave the country are intimidated into keeping the ruling ZANU PF in power.
Dangarembga was speaking to The Guardian before she was convicted of inciting public violence for protesting against the arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume.
Dangarembga admitted she was considering joining thousands of Zimbabweans who left the country over the collapse of the economy, political crisis, and human rights abuses. She said:
Every time we say it can’t get any worse it does. We have to realise that actually there is no bottom so we have to start kicking ourselves upwards.
I really didn’t want to leave Zimbabwe. I think now, post-coup is where I see that there are absolutely no opportunities for me in this country. Service delivery is decreasing, the economic environment is critical again, and it seems to me that this is by design. I don’t want to be designed.
So this would be the time in my life where I would think about it. Which is very sad. I brought up my children here, they had a good education, but it doesn’t offer anything for them. Most middle-class and other families do not have their children in the country. Either people have the money to send their children out or the children find their own way out because they also want prospects.
I do not know who, besides the politically exposed people, that Zimbabwe actually offers anything to at the moment. There will always be the class of people who simply do not have the means to leave and they are intimidated into keeping Zanu-PF in power.
She said Zimbabwe was still being governed like an empire forcing, “Anyone who has the opportunity to leave.”
Dangarembga said the ruling ZANU PF is NOT interested in building the country as they think “that this is all ours to exploit.”