Robson Beans 🇿🇼

Some deem it divine retribution - a penance for rebellion. Others, a cosmic duel between good and evil. Yet the enigma persists: Why does the battle endure? Two millennia post-Calvary, the faithful still grapple. The battlefield eludes sight, yet its echoes reverberate. Our strategy? Our leader? The truth crystallizes: We fight not against flesh and blood, but against unseen principalities. Our battleground? The human heart - the theater of choices. Our strategy? The armor of God - truth, righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word. Our leader? The One who conquered death - the risen Christ. robsonbeans.com/2020/05/28/the…

@ZimLingo Ndau for me

What’s your favorite Shona dialect?

I hear this. And I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen because the alienation is real and I’ve seen it too. But I wonder if ‘can’t fully belong anywhere’ is sometimes the beginning of something new rather than just a loss. The question is whether we frame it as rootlessness or as the first generation of a new kind of Zimbabwean. That framing doesn’t erase the sadness. But it changes what’s possible.

@mandivambaj Hear hear…

@BeansRobson We raise them to be kind well rounded people

The children of Zimbabwean diaspora parents grow up in two worlds and belong fully to neither. They are too Zimbabwean for their peers and too foreign for kumusha. It sounds more like confusion but, that is a new identity being formed. Diaspora parents: do you raise your children to identify primarily as Zimbabwean or as citizens of your host country?

This video depicts this entire thread in real time. Thank you for this.

That exhaustion is one of the most specific feelings of being Zimbabwean abroad. You defend it not because the critics are wrong. You defend it because they don’t carry it the way you do. There’s a difference between someone who knows Zimbabwe’s failures and someone who grieves them. You can hear it immediately.

Fair and welcome correction sir. Indeed Faye Chung’s role in designing Zimbabwe’s education system deserves far more recognition than it gets. But I’d apply the same logic I used on the economy: leaders own outcomes under their watch, whether they personally designed the policy or not. Mugabe prioritised education politically and funded it. Faye Chung built it. Both things are true. Her erasure from the narrative is its own problem which I think is worth discussing.

@BeansRobson Correction. It was while he was head of state, but the modern Zim education system is largely the legacy of Faye Chung.

Robert Mugabe built more schools than any leader in African history. He also destroyed the economy that was supposed to pay for them. Legacy is complicated.

@Thembiemoyoo True. If they are decent human beings first, I guess everything else is secondary.

@BeansRobson Global citizens, we don’t have a choice but to raise them as best as we can!

Post 2017 events have made Mugabe’s legacy look great. He had some respect for the constitution of the land

This is the argument made flesh. Raised outside Zimbabwe, fully Zimbabwean. Voted in 2023. Preparing for the referendum. That’s active citizenship from the diaspora. And your last line is telling: SA’s exclusion doesn’t create rootlessness. It deepens the original root. Thank you for this

PSG look like they’re just better at this sport more than us.

@Blessing_Museki Whenever you’re ready sir …

@BeansRobson Its a problem, but I'm sorry we are not discussing it today.

I appreciate the pushback but I'd invite you to re-read what I wrote. I didn't say every diaspora child struggles. I said they belong fully to neither world and that a new identity is being formed. That's not a criticism but an observation about something genuinely new emerging. The children who transition with ease between both settings are actually proving my point. They're not fully Zimbabwean in the kumusha sense and not fully of their host country either. They've built something in between. That's the new identity I'm describing. We're not disagreeing. You're just reading disdain into a post that contains none. I'd also gently ask. Where exactly did you find the superiority complex or disdain? I described children caught between two worlds through no fault of their own and called it a new identity being formed. That's not disdain. That's curiosity bordering on admiration for something genuinely new. If you read contempt in that, I'd suggest the contempt isn't in the post.

That's a dangerous assumption. Maybe it happens with your family members but that can't be used to draw conclusions about every child in the Diaspora. That's a fallacy. The majority adapt very well in both settings & often transition between the two home countries with so much ease, showing non of the the superiority complex or disdain you mention.

This is the sharpest point in the thread I must say. You’re right, class cuts through both worlds and the ‘belonging to neither’ feeling predates the diaspora. It exists inside Zimbabwe itself. And shared struggle as the sole criteria for group identity is exactly what needs deconstructing in my opinion. Belonging should include shared stakes, not just shared hardship.

Its not just diaspora-kumusha. Class cuts through both, that "belonging to neither" feeling can even happen inside Zim too. Inequalities create these things. A kid from Chitown, a kid from Brooke & a kid from Glen norah all have different Zims. Its the same in the diaspora. The script is identical, you don't share my hardships, so you're not fully us.

@ZimLingo A fridge.

What did you buy using your first salary?

Genuine question and handisi kurwa , is there a plan for 24/7 potable water in taps or tave vemaBorehole ?

The strongest Christians I know are the ones who read the Bible themselves and don't outsource their theology to a man in a suit. I genuinely believe faith and critical thinking are not enemies.

I’d say Both. He belongs to both and, that’s the gift and the complexity of where he comes from. But which he identifies with more will depend on two things: where he feels accepted, and where life takes him. I can give him Shona. I can give him the stories, the food, the roots. What I can’t control is which world embraces him back. That part is his to navigate and mine to prepare him for.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 Which world do you believe he belongs to?

@Royal_Rozvi 😂 hamungavasiiri nhamo

@BeansRobson I have told mine to apply for citizenship, Zim has no future for them. Once they get it, ini ndodzoka zvangu paMhondoro

Thank you for this. Your observation is spot on. I agree with you that these are questions that touch something real. And your point about 3rd generation kids is exactly the evidence. Identity doesn’t follow a passport. It follows the stories, the food, the language, the grief. Three generations later and Zimbabwe is still in the room.

@BeansRobson @JumasJohn41791 @MaiZuKitchen An interesting topic, unfortunately your audience is quite defensive and I wonder for what reasons. 🤔 Diaspora kids are usually always caught in between especially for first generation diaspora parents. I know of 3rd generation kids who still identify with original country