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Old 10-06-2005, 09:48   #5
Gogogo
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Re: Zimbabwe Immigrants

Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Whilst looking at the thread about Zimbabwe, I thought I would share something that I found out last week.

A long time ago I posted about a woman I got involved with who claimed to be of South African Zulu descence, she claimed she went to boarding school in Zimbabwe and married a Zimbabwe government minister. I posted about how she was using many different names, and how I caught her out on many lies and how she had taken a job with my bank for a week and looked into my account details.

Last week I went to visit a female Nigerian friend to do a little favour for her, another one of her doctor friends was there and she got chatting and asked me about my "so called" South African friend. Within minutes I discovered that she knew my "friend" her sister and her best friend. (also dodgy)
She lauged and said she was never from South Africa, she was from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe. She said her original surname is a Shona/Zimbabwe one and Zulus do not speak Shona, as its all to do with their pride/custom etc.

She then told me my "friend" had got into the UK by using one of the favoured tricks of the wealthy Zimbabweans, she had gone into South Africa and bought a fake passport and driving licence. She said corruption is so bad in South Africa these can be purchased from the government department issuing them, and there are lots of Zimbabwe people in this country who have gained access using this method, they use the fake documents to come into the country as students.
She then told me that one of her group living in Cardiff (possibly her) was caught last year attempting to purchase petrol with a stolen credit card, when she was arrested the police found that she had a handbag full of stolen cards.

She also said that the ones using fraudulant means to get into this country are the wealthy ones, as the poor could never afford the fake documents or travel cost to get here.

I know she was talking about applying for british citizenship at the time, so I guess she could end up with a british passport......It makes me wonder how many apparent "Legal" immigrants we have in this country, have gained access using the same methods.

It seems that you have experienced someone who in desperation has committed criminal offences and was prepared to lie and cheat in order to take advantage. Being close to the Zimbo community here I'm sure you are right and some undesirable opportunists and zanu pf apparatchiks, mugabe supporters have set up homes businesses here. I can assure you that there are Zimbabweans who are well educated, have GCE qualfications who have no obvious future in Zimbabwe who would love the opportunity to live and work in the UK, in fact of the probable 500,000 Zimbos here many will be working hard in all walks of life.

The Zulu language has no common ground with Shona , which itself has several dialects and clans in Zimbabwe and parts of Mozambique. Zulu is though related to the Ndebele language, which is spoken by Ndebele people in southern Zimbabwe. Zulu and Ndebele are noticeable as languages due to the click sounds. not easy languages to learn.

Before and during the arrival of Cecil Rhodes and the pioneers who set up Rhodesia conflict between the shona and ndelebe tribes was a way of life there was bitter animosity, reawakened in the early 1980s when mugabe launched the Fifth brigade of the Zimbabwean Army to terrorise matabeleland in order to show them who the boss is
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