According
to the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy [e], an advocacy body, the African
diaspora, which can be broke into three main periods, “is one of the most
important in world in terms of numbers”. They argue that the first African
diaspora was that of slaves labour to the Americas, the second being the
colonial diaspora where persons mostly sought greener pasture in countries that
once colonized them. For example, people from Francophone Congo would be
inclined to seek opportunities in France as opposed to Anglophone Britain. The third
form of the African diaspora encompasses the current phenomenon where millions
of Africans are emigrating from their homelands to other African counties be it
for economic, political and security reasons.
The
focus of my exploration is in part influenced by the society I come from. My current
town of residence once served as a recruitment center and the main transit
route for labourers from East and Central Africa en route to the South African
mines. Upon completion of their tenures, not all returned to their homelands. A
considerable number of them opted to settle in Francistown, making it a melting
pot of cultures from Angola, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Among them
and poignant to my argument was Emmanuel Mbatista an Angolan who spoke nine African
languages. Interestingly, Mbatista could not sustain a conversation in a pure
lingual but veered from language to language.