The Biblical story of the prodigal son is loud and clear on my mind when I reflect upon the situation with those who have come back home from neighboring South Africa.

It is not easy for the men, women and children who are coming to Zimbabwe after many years away from home. While their circumstances differ, underlying stories are of an uncertain future.

My trip to the IOM reception centre in Beitbridge, Matabeleland South Province has been a painful one. Along the road are numerous buses labeled deportation either to Malawi. You clearly see that the back seats are packed with bags as these are probably the only belongings that these people have managed to take back home.

The IOM centre where a clinic is housed, a main kitchen, toilets has clearly maxed its holding capacity and needs to act as a layover before people head out to their homes.

Here is a place which requires beefing up in terms of resources such as food, bathrooms, toilets and so on. It is not a place for the faint-hearted. It is also not a place you can visit twice. 

I keep asking myself the following questions; what happened to South Africa? Where did it all go wrong? Is this a divine intervention or divine order to have Zimbabwe harness the acquired skills for the country’s next evolution? What do the South Africans gain from being so cruel and heartless and from reaping where they did not sow? 

Then the what ifs cloud the mind again. What if it happened to them, would they hand it the way our people have? What if their economy nose dives, would they be able to survive?

What I know and am grateful for though is that, His Excellency, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa has embraced his children, like the father of the prodigal son, run after seeing his child from a distance and wants to have him take a bath, wear the best robe before he can throw a party for him.

The question is, are the returnees ready to take up the challenge and help build their country or their minds want to linger on what they have lost?