Opinion / Columnist
Govt cannot block the exodus of professionals through force
12 hrs ago | Views
Let's not kid ourselves. You can burn the letters, double the fees, threaten the nurses, and chain the airport gates if you want - but people will still find a way to leave this crumbling husk of a nation. This isn't just about migration anymore; it's an escape. An instinct for survival. Zimbabwe has become a place where dreams go to drown, and the people, God help them, are just trying to swim to shore.
According to NewsDay Zimbabwe, the government refused to release verification letters for over 4,000 nurses who had already paid the US$300 fee each, effectively blocking them from accepting jobs in the United Kingdom.
For a regime that talks endlessly about rights, dignity, and Pan-African self-determination, this is a betrayal of the most basic freedom: the right to choose where and how you live.
The irony writes itself. This is the same government that can't pay a living wage, can't provide clean water in hospitals, and can't retain trained professionals without threats and roadblocks. Yet they believe they own the bodies, futures, and passports of the people they've failed. That, somehow, by controlling documentation, they can trap people in a place they no longer want to call home. But what they always forget is that desperation is a force of nature. You can't legislate it out of people. You can't imprison hope.
The numbers tell the story. In just the past year, over 6,789 Zimbabwean nurses have migrated to the UK alone, while more than 1,000 have gone to Ireland. These are not abstract statistics. These are people who have grown tired of pretending this place can be fixed from within. They are your cousins, your neighbors, your former classmates—now working 12-hour shifts in Manchester or Dublin because back home they were expected to treat critical patients with no gloves, no saline drips, and no respect.
And yet, instead of confronting why people are leaving, the government has turned to coercion. This isn't policy. This is panic. The nurse-to-patient ratio in some public hospitals has now reportedly ballooned to 1:30, meaning one exhausted, underpaid nurse for every thirty patients. It's a miracle anyone is still alive in our wards. But instead of hiring, reforming, or respecting the profession, officials are choosing the route of entrapment. They would rather hoard diplomas and withhold paperwork than admit their governance is pushing the country into terminal decline.
What they fail to grasp—what they will never grasp—is that people will walk. On foot if they must.
We are a nation with arguably more productive citizens abroad than within. According to the Zimbabwe Independent, Zimbabwe's diaspora was estimated at over 5 million in 2024 and growing fast. They send back hundreds of millions in remittances, which now make up more than 9% of the country's GDP according to the World Bank. That's right—those who were forced to flee are now the ones keeping this economy on life support. How's that for irony?
You see, there are no bullet wounds left to treat in Zimbabwe. The violence is slow now—measured in hunger, silence, and unpaid wages. Nurses don't flee because they want luxury; they flee because it's impossible to thrive here without bribing the system or becoming a cog in its rot. The diploma they earned in good faith becomes state property. The job offer becomes contraband. The hope of betterment is treated like betrayal. But even a bird will abandon the nest if it keeps catching fire.
There's a madness to this moment, one that history will judge harshly. A state that cannot build working institutions now wants to block the exits to the collapsing house. These are the actions of leaders who fear comparison. They don't want our nurses going abroad because when they flourish elsewhere, it becomes damning proof that the failure lies not in the citizen—but in the system they left behind.
We are ruled by people who believe loyalty means staying in a room that's burning, quietly. But people are not furniture. They will not wait for your permission to save themselves. They will tunnel under the wall, jump the fence, or find a job in the Gulf cleaning homes—because no form of paperwork tyranny can match the simple desire to live.
And if the government thinks it has the moral or political capital to enforce these blocks, it's deluding itself. This is the same administration that can't supply paracetamol to clinics, but it can find time to suppress nurses. The same cabinet that flies to Singapore for checkups now wants to trap professionals in underfunded wards. They believe blocking the pipeline will solve the crisis. But they don't understand: the crisis is not the migration. The crisis is the reason for it.
And the young are watching. Watching how their parents' generation is punished for leaving and punished for staying. Watching how every dream must first pass through a checkpoint manned by corrupt officials. This is why they too will leave—on student visas, on visitor permits, through relatives, or across borders by moonlight. The government may win this battle of papers, but it has already lost the war for belief.
No policy will reverse the tide unless the reason for leaving is removed. And the reason is everywhere—on pay slips that don't cover rent, in clinics without medication, in schools with no chalk, and in every insult disguised as patriotic rhetoric. People leave when home begins to feel like captivity. People leave when promises become threats. People leave when the only way to breathe is to run.
And so they run.
What we are witnessing is the disintegration of moral authority. A government that has failed in every metric now seeks to enforce loyalty through bureaucracy. But what they don't understand is that people no longer need their permission. They've lost it. You don't ask your captor for a key—you find a crowbar.
There will always be a way out. Because the hunger to survive is stronger than your gatekeeping. Because people would rather risk loneliness abroad than be choked in their own homeland. Because we have no more illusions to protect. This country eats its best and buries the rest. But even the graves are full now. The living are leaving.
And when they go, they will write their own letters—of freedom, of defiance, of home reimagined far from the grip of the state. You can block a document, but you can't block a movement. You can imprison a diploma, but not a dream. You can stall an application, but not an exodus.
So block the 4,000 today. But know this: they will leave anyway. And so will the next 10,000. Because no one wants to be a nurse in a land with no gauze, no future, and no respect. People are not cattle. They will not be herded back into despair. They will always find a way out of this shithole.
And when they go, they will take with them not just their skill—but their dignity.
And they will not look back.
Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo is an independent social justice activist, writer, researcher, and social commentator.
Call/WhatsApp: +263780022343
Email: kumbiraithierryn@gmail.com
Blog: https://zealousthierry.art.blog/
According to NewsDay Zimbabwe, the government refused to release verification letters for over 4,000 nurses who had already paid the US$300 fee each, effectively blocking them from accepting jobs in the United Kingdom.
For a regime that talks endlessly about rights, dignity, and Pan-African self-determination, this is a betrayal of the most basic freedom: the right to choose where and how you live.
The irony writes itself. This is the same government that can't pay a living wage, can't provide clean water in hospitals, and can't retain trained professionals without threats and roadblocks. Yet they believe they own the bodies, futures, and passports of the people they've failed. That, somehow, by controlling documentation, they can trap people in a place they no longer want to call home. But what they always forget is that desperation is a force of nature. You can't legislate it out of people. You can't imprison hope.
The numbers tell the story. In just the past year, over 6,789 Zimbabwean nurses have migrated to the UK alone, while more than 1,000 have gone to Ireland. These are not abstract statistics. These are people who have grown tired of pretending this place can be fixed from within. They are your cousins, your neighbors, your former classmates—now working 12-hour shifts in Manchester or Dublin because back home they were expected to treat critical patients with no gloves, no saline drips, and no respect.
And yet, instead of confronting why people are leaving, the government has turned to coercion. This isn't policy. This is panic. The nurse-to-patient ratio in some public hospitals has now reportedly ballooned to 1:30, meaning one exhausted, underpaid nurse for every thirty patients. It's a miracle anyone is still alive in our wards. But instead of hiring, reforming, or respecting the profession, officials are choosing the route of entrapment. They would rather hoard diplomas and withhold paperwork than admit their governance is pushing the country into terminal decline.
What they fail to grasp—what they will never grasp—is that people will walk. On foot if they must.
We are a nation with arguably more productive citizens abroad than within. According to the Zimbabwe Independent, Zimbabwe's diaspora was estimated at over 5 million in 2024 and growing fast. They send back hundreds of millions in remittances, which now make up more than 9% of the country's GDP according to the World Bank. That's right—those who were forced to flee are now the ones keeping this economy on life support. How's that for irony?
You see, there are no bullet wounds left to treat in Zimbabwe. The violence is slow now—measured in hunger, silence, and unpaid wages. Nurses don't flee because they want luxury; they flee because it's impossible to thrive here without bribing the system or becoming a cog in its rot. The diploma they earned in good faith becomes state property. The job offer becomes contraband. The hope of betterment is treated like betrayal. But even a bird will abandon the nest if it keeps catching fire.
There's a madness to this moment, one that history will judge harshly. A state that cannot build working institutions now wants to block the exits to the collapsing house. These are the actions of leaders who fear comparison. They don't want our nurses going abroad because when they flourish elsewhere, it becomes damning proof that the failure lies not in the citizen—but in the system they left behind.
We are ruled by people who believe loyalty means staying in a room that's burning, quietly. But people are not furniture. They will not wait for your permission to save themselves. They will tunnel under the wall, jump the fence, or find a job in the Gulf cleaning homes—because no form of paperwork tyranny can match the simple desire to live.
And if the government thinks it has the moral or political capital to enforce these blocks, it's deluding itself. This is the same administration that can't supply paracetamol to clinics, but it can find time to suppress nurses. The same cabinet that flies to Singapore for checkups now wants to trap professionals in underfunded wards. They believe blocking the pipeline will solve the crisis. But they don't understand: the crisis is not the migration. The crisis is the reason for it.
And the young are watching. Watching how their parents' generation is punished for leaving and punished for staying. Watching how every dream must first pass through a checkpoint manned by corrupt officials. This is why they too will leave—on student visas, on visitor permits, through relatives, or across borders by moonlight. The government may win this battle of papers, but it has already lost the war for belief.
No policy will reverse the tide unless the reason for leaving is removed. And the reason is everywhere—on pay slips that don't cover rent, in clinics without medication, in schools with no chalk, and in every insult disguised as patriotic rhetoric. People leave when home begins to feel like captivity. People leave when promises become threats. People leave when the only way to breathe is to run.
And so they run.
What we are witnessing is the disintegration of moral authority. A government that has failed in every metric now seeks to enforce loyalty through bureaucracy. But what they don't understand is that people no longer need their permission. They've lost it. You don't ask your captor for a key—you find a crowbar.
There will always be a way out. Because the hunger to survive is stronger than your gatekeeping. Because people would rather risk loneliness abroad than be choked in their own homeland. Because we have no more illusions to protect. This country eats its best and buries the rest. But even the graves are full now. The living are leaving.
And when they go, they will write their own letters—of freedom, of defiance, of home reimagined far from the grip of the state. You can block a document, but you can't block a movement. You can imprison a diploma, but not a dream. You can stall an application, but not an exodus.
So block the 4,000 today. But know this: they will leave anyway. And so will the next 10,000. Because no one wants to be a nurse in a land with no gauze, no future, and no respect. People are not cattle. They will not be herded back into despair. They will always find a way out of this shithole.
And when they go, they will take with them not just their skill—but their dignity.
And they will not look back.
Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo is an independent social justice activist, writer, researcher, and social commentator.
Call/WhatsApp: +263780022343
Email: kumbiraithierryn@gmail.com
Blog: https://zealousthierry.art.blog/
Source - Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo
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