Dismas Nkunda
There are stories I heard of but always wished away as hearsay. But that was not until I heard them vivid and live. Last week human rights groups were in Kampala to review the state of citizenship and belonging in Africa. It was then that I learnt how big the problem of statelessness and denial of citizenship was in Africa.
Out there are millions of Africans who do not have a country they call their own. They only occupy space. For me it was inconceivable that in this age and time there are people who belong to no country.
Two prominent Africans were in town to tell the stories of their lives. Jenerali Ulimwengu and Trevor Ncube have some things in common. Both are journalists. Both have been denationalised. I sat in stoic silence as I listened to the two scribes groan over their lives.
I will begin with Jenerali. Not only was he a governor in one region of Tanzania, a member of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) youth league, but Jenerali was also the press secretary to the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
Jenerali knows all who matter in Tanzania. He was at one time a close friend to immediate former President Benjamin Mkapa. Actually Mkapa was Jenerali’s editor at the government newspaper, The Daily News.
But things began falling apart for Jenerali when Tanzania abandoned the socialist thinking that had been a hallmark for Nyerere’s government. Privatisation was now in vogue.
Everything that seemed dear to Tanzanians was being sold to the lowest bidder. As an owner of his media group, Habari Corporation, Jenerali thought how best to expose the rot that was eating at the marrow of his government. He picked up the pen and began chronicling what was going wrong in Tanzania. And that did it.
The state, scared of this Fourth State, decided they had to stop him. And soon they found the best way. Suddenly it occurred to them that Jenerali could not be Tanzanian.
He was asked to prove his nationality. He was variously told by the country’s Immigration that he had to apply for naturalisation in a country that he was born, served and lived for decades. He refused. He told them he knew no any other country but Tanzania.
As he narrates his ordeal, you feel tears of laughter but at the same time hold back tears of anger. One day during a two-year routine at Immigration, he was told he had no country. “You are stateless,” they told him.
In order for him to stay in the country, he was advised to apply for an investor’s license. He could then get temporary permit to stay in his country.
Now enter Trevor Ncube. Trevor is Zimbabwean and owns two newspapers; The Independent in Zimbabwe, The Mail and Guardian in South Africa.
In Zimbabwe, any critical newspaper is as good as dead. Yet closing the newspaper does not look good in the eyes of the right thinking world. A plan was hatched. Surely there must be something that Trevor could be gotten on. So a background check was commissioned.
Where was he born?
Answer: Zimbabwe.
How about his parents?
Answer: One in Zambia and another in Zimbabwe.
Ah! Excellent; then he must be Zambian.
Within a few days, Trevor had to prove that he was Zimbabwean. His passport was confiscated. He had to apply afresh for his citizenship, but he had to denounce his Zambian linkages first.
As Trevor narrates how he went to the Zambian High Commission in Harare to denounce his citizenship, you could hear a pin drop. We were all staring at him. At the High Commission he was given a form to fill. He stared at it and did not know what to do with it. How can you denounce a citizenship that you never had in the first place?
Wounded, he decided to take the matter to the High Court.
“Fortunately our courts in Zimbabwe still work,” he says. The courts ordered government to give him back his passport and with it, his citizenship.
It is not only the Trevors and Jeneralis of this Africa that have had to be humiliated to prove their citizenship. Late last year in Lusaka I chatted with former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda as he narrated his ordeal at the hands of former president Fredrick Chiluba who wanted Kaunda to go back to Malawi for that was where his ancestors were born before Zambian independence. The light moment however came when Kaunda leaned towards me and said, “My grandson, that man who said I am not Zambian is now the one without a Zambian passport, but I have mine.”
That was in reference to the removal of the passport from Chiluba who is facing corruption charges and has been barred from leaving Zambia. Poetic justice, I thought.
These cases are for well known Africans. Yet there are countless other ordinary people, who have equally suffered or lost their citizenship at the whims of their leaders and have no means of telling their stories. And I hear we still have a Pan African vision!
Dismas Nkunda is Co-Director of the International Refugee Rights Initiative in Kampala, Uganda. This column was originally published in the Weekly Observer, Uganda. |
