I am a second-generation immigrant in the UK. I’ve never phrased it like that before, but I suppose it is what I am. It’s a weird label to process because being a second-generation immigrant comes with a complex understanding of where one considers home, our identity and where we feel we belong. It also comes with its own troubles of acceptance.

“My Other? Black. African. British. Woman … Once British before I was African because I felt rejection in my mothering country long before I understood that I had never truly felt acceptance from the country I first called home.”

– I Am Other: An Introduction

Many second-generation immigrants identify solely with their birthplace, because it is all they have ever known. I, however, do not. I was born in London, but I grew up viewing Zimbabwe as not just the country in which my mother and father were born, but as the place that I come from. I was raised between two continents, within two cultures and in two languages. I grew up with a strong understanding of my heritage and country’s history. I am Zimbabwean. However, I have not always felt like I belong to Zimbabwe.

Like Ruvarashe, who spoke about her experience in Part I, I too was referred to as ‘musalad’ or ‘salala’, where a salala is seen as munhu akarasa tsika. A person who has lost their culture. However, unlike Ruvarashe, my experience of not belonging was rooted in more than just class, for the greatest discomfort I ever felt in Zimbabwe came not only from my privilege, but from being British.

When it came down to it, it didn’t matter how much Shona culture my parents had instilled in me or how often we flew back. To some, I would always be foreigner in my homeland. Members of my family would tell me that I wasn’t really Zimbabwean or really African. A comment that always stung given that in the UK I wasn’t really British either. And then there was my accent, which no matter how hard I tried to mask, was always a point of amusement when I spoke in Shona around family, strangers and everyone in between.

Now, I admit, while I have always maintained a strong understanding of the language, my spoken Shona is not as good as it should be, and that’s because I didn’t speak it for years. Something I now regret, given that my reluctance to speak it was not born out of a disinterest in my mother tongue, rather it was out of embarrassment.

Instead of encouragement, I often experienced ridicule for my mispronunciations. When I was younger, I’d greet adults, who upon hearing my accent would not only mock the way that I spoke, but would begin to talk about me as if I wasn’t there; their assumption being that I wouldn’t understand because they were speaking in Shona. But little did they know, I understood everything. They would often talk about how awful it was that I didn’t speak the language and that I must have thought that I was better than them and above the culture because I was British.

It was jarring and honestly ironic because, in truth, I didn’t think I was better than them. Instead, the second-generation immigrant in me was searching for acceptance: desperately trying to disguise the foreign stench in my speech, scrapping the Britishness from my accent and carving out the Western marks on my skin in a bid to fit in.

I wanted to be like them, to speak Shona with finesse and be at ease in my homeland like a true native-born Zimbabwean. I wanted to embrace my culture, to feel society welcome me as I am, and to call Zimbabwe home. But instead, I was a visitor: at best a ‘polished Black’, who had not only failed to master her mother tongue, but spoke it in the voice of her people’s colonisers.

I wanted acceptance and belonging, but instead I felt rejection and that gave way to a deep complex that began with me shying away from my mother tongue, and grew until I was shying away from Zimbabwe altogether. And then I was just lost.

Munhu akarasa tsika; a true salala.

“Today I am African before I am British … because it was in understanding this that I began to experience a greater sense of belonging to myself.”

– I Am Other: An Introduction

I began my journey back to my culture after speaking to one of my uncles about the growing complex a few years ago. We were having family dinner one summer’s evening, discussing the experience of the polished Blacks, class and one’s right to belong. He told me that there will always be someone to judge you based of their own standard, but you shouldn’t let that make you doubt who you are.

“So what you speak in broken Shona and in a British accent?”, he said. “And so what they laugh at you? It’s your country, it’s your culture. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re not Zimbabwean. You are.”

And that, ladies and gents, changed everything.

When I think about the root of Ruvarashe’s and my experiences, it’s clear that it goes further than just classism. The issue is deep and entangled with xenophobia and racism. It’s fuelled by Western dominance and colonialism and in time it has created a crater right in the middle of Zimbabwe that stretches out into the diaspora.

It’s interesting to me that Western culture is an ideal that we try to emulate, given that it was also the Western elements of my identity, my Britishness, that put me outside of Zimbabwean society. Growing up, I wondered if it was a generational thing, given that amongst my cousins (who were labelled ‘polished Blacks’) and their friends, it was kind of cool that I was ‘the British one’. However, it was around adults that I desperately wished I wasn’t.

I wondered if it was a colonial memory, if older generations and those less exposed to Western culture had a deeper understanding of the hardships under British rule and the ongoing detriment to Zimbabwean culture that they subsequently reject ‘polished Blacks’ or British ones like me. Because the impact is clear and devastating to see.

Take the language for example, excellent Shona is not mandatory in Zimbabwe. However, excellent English is in the UK and in many other parts of the world, including Zimbabwe. As a result, a lot of children speak great English and each year fewer speak great Shona, especially in the diaspora. While a language is not all that a culture is, a fundamental element of Zimbabwean culture is Shona or Ndebele, depending on which part of the country you’re from, and it’s slowly fading.

So, how can we change that?

Well, as a community, we need to encourage and uplift each other. Not judge one another because of class or put each other down because of one’s Shona or Ndebele fluency. We also need to accept that Zimbabweans are citizens of the world; we are not all solely Zimbabwean. However, our culture is important, and we need to enrich and embrace it unapologetically, wherever we are. Regardless of how far our feet may have carried us, we are one nation, one people, one Zimbabwe. The crater must be filled.

In practicing what I preach, today I go about integrating my Shona phrases into my everyday English: forever mispronouncing, but slowly improving, sounding as Shonglish as ever and doing my best not to care. I won’t lie the complex is still quite strong, but I’m determined to quash it. Because I am Zimbabwean regardless of their acceptance and I regret ever having allowed someone else’s judgement make me feel otherwise.

And so, as my fellow Zimbabwean Thandiwe Newton said as she corrected the misspelling of her name, “I’m taking back what’s mine” and reclaiming my identity. Because regardless of where we are born in this world, we all came from and belong to the village. *Sips Tea*

More on Race & Nationality

Join the Sips Tea fam