Intercommunal Tensions: Post-1980 Black Immigrant Community in Britain

Abstract

Exploring the dynamics of diaspora relations between the Shona and the Ndebele exposes how both the Nationalist Movement and the post-colonial government failed to implement nation-building initiatives needed to unite the Black African community that had been polarised along ethnic lines. Black Zimbabweans had migrated as products of unresolved ethnic conflicts that had been developed and nurtured throughout the phases of Zimbabwe’s history. Although pre-colonial arrival of the Ndebele started the development of Shona–Ndebele tensions which the British consolidated through its divide-and-rule agenda, it was memories of the civil conflict which became a major deterrent to uniting Black Zimbabwean immigrants. In the absence of shared historic socio-economic or cultural commonalities, ethnic particularism and separatism continued to dominate relations within the Black diaspora community in Britain.