Wednesday, 7 January 2015

"Where are the principles and the morals?"

Asks Shadrack Mbiru of his deportation to Zimbabwe, finally, after eight years:
His life is not in danger in Zimbabwe - he concedes this.
Maybe it's naive of me to ask where his principles and morals are..?
An aunt has taken in Shadreck and he says he and her four daughters keep arguing about their way of life.
"It's totally different from England," he says. "There's no public transport; you have to go in these combi vans with three people on a seat. The food is strange and there are fake products everywhere, even the Colgate toothpaste isn't real, it tastes really funny."
He laughs.
Can we really 'save' everyone in the world from the awfulness of a lack of public transport..?

How did he come here?

He arrived as a visitor in 2002, aged 13, and his mother applied for leave for him to remain as a dependant multiple times, but this was never approved.
At this stage Shadreck says he knew very little about his immigration status, or even what "immigration status" was.
He says it wasn't until he was in college that it became apparent that it would be an issue.
At 18 an application was made for asylum for Shadreck - this was refused and his appeal rights were exhausted in October 2009, by which time he was 21.
Since then he's been prosecuted repeatedly for failing to return to Zimbabwe and his final appeal was refused in April.
 Hmmm...
So does Shadreck see why the government had to send him back?
"Not if you've given most of your life to a country," he says.
What has he 'given' Britain? He seems mostly to have taken - free education, free healthcare...

H/T: beagleboy1982 via Twitter
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymouslemming7 January 2015 at 12:21

    If he got a college education in the UK, he should finding moving to South Africa pretty simple. Problem solved.

    If he didn't get a college education, he should still finding moving to South Africa pretty simple. Many other Zimbabweans have managed.

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  2. andy7 January 2015 at 17:10

    Isnt SA following Zimbabwe down the economic Swannee?

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  3. Anonymous7 January 2015 at 21:07

    What a dreadful xenophobe.
    Have the police been alerted to this hate crime ? Oh sorry, just noticed the name.

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  4. andy57597 January 2015 at 21:15

    He arrived aged thirteen, he is now twenty-one, so how good was his education that he asserts he's given most of his life to this country? On another note; I once saw an African at a Sainsbury's checkout, he must have emptied the toothpaste display. Now I understand, and I do have a little sympathy for the lad.

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  5. Anonymous8 January 2015 at 06:56

    If he came to South Africa, he would be competing with all the other Zimbabweans with Zimbabwean education. The best thing Mugabe did in 1980 was put resources into education and requiring high standards of learning. Post apartheid South Africa adopted all the worst British ideas about child centred education without the resources, especially in poor areas, and encouraged the most experienced and best qualified teachers (mostly white) to retire instead of drafting them to poor rural areas. So Shadrach's educational attainment is probably somewhere between his compatriots and the locals with an extra layer of entitlement, resistable by most employers.

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  6. Furor Teutonicus8 January 2015 at 15:12

    XX andy5759 said...
    how good was his education that he asserts he's given most of his life to this country? XX

    Maybe he is not planning on living that much longer???

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  7. JuliaM11 January 2015 at 06:31

    "Many other Zimbabweans have managed."

    Indeed! Though as andy points out, that may not be a long-term option.

    "What a dreadful xenophobe.
    Have the police been alerted to this hate crime ? "

    :D

    "The best thing Mugabe did in 1980 was put resources into education and requiring high standards of learning."

    Ah, if only we did the same here...

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