Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper looks at how ethnic hierarchies and tensions in a migrant community change within the Zimbabwean diaspora. It discusses how the relations between the two main ethnic groups in Zimbabwe, the Shona and Ndebele, morph and permeate a new set of social standards in the United Kingdom. The hierarchies and tensions are still active in the diaspora, and this paper shows how the social, political, and historical tensions become visible in a migrant community. Zimbabwe, while still having a unified front as being one “nation,” is and has been a divided nation for decades, if not centuries. This paper focuses on the current mentalities of change in relation to Zimbabwean ethnic tensions once they have moved out of Zimbabwe. My methodology has been ethnographic work and semi-structured interviews within a large migrant/diasporic Zimbabwean community in the UK. The summaries of the interviews will also show how the current political situation in Zimbabwe is giving a new voice to the ever present tensions, even amongst those that have moved away from their country. I look at how post-colonial institutions create ‘spaces’ of discriminatory action for migrant communities. I also look at how the very notion of a colonised people living in the “space” of the people that colonised them in the first place creates a colonisation of the mind, and how these ethnic tensions between the two groups from Zimbabwe are in an interesting “space” in time, given their unique take on colonial power in the present.