Rabbie Serumula, author, award-winning poet, journalist.
Africa spends millions repatriating its citizens, then gathers in Parliament to discuss why they left.
This week, the Pan-African Parliament adopted resolutions on xenophobia, free movement, food security, health systems and economic development. At almost the same moment, Zimbabwe disclosed that it had spent millions helping returning migrants rebuild their lives after leaving South Africa.
The irony is difficult to ignore. We are paying for the consequences of problems we already know how to solve.There is nothing wrong with bringing people home. The question is why they had to leave.
Before a migrant becomes the subject of a parliamentary debate on xenophobia, they are first the victim of something far quieter: the absence of opportunity. Before they stand in a queue at a border post, they have already stood in the queue for work. Before they are called a foreigner, they have already discovered that their homeland has no place for their ambitions.
