WHO IS RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT AFRICAN DIASPORANTS’ RETIREMENT MOVES CHOICES?

PREMISE

Every African or any other Diasporant tell and live their own respective stories. The only common thread binding us Diasporants is the reality that we are all human. We are in the daily life-long pursuit of the same fundamental material and conceptual existential values. We all happen to be doing so in faraway lands from our varying original homelands. And this is where the similarities end.

We are not only individually functionally different as to each our individual capacities and capabilities to work to satisfy our variable personal needs and wants for survival. Both in terms of consumption and access to things, we, as individuals and members of collectives share certain common cohesive values. But we relate differently to the bounty of the earth and beyond. That according to particular times and spaces, status, knowledge, tastes and preferences prevailing.

INFINITE BOUNTY OF THE EARTH
All things remaining equal, what bounty the earth has on offer to humanity is unfathomably infinitely diverse. This is the basis for our individual and collective identities. From it spurs and are sustained as innumerable systems of thought. These thought systems endeavour to make sense of our material and non-material worlds. Sustenance and prolongation of life, if not attainment of immortality, being the ultimate goal.  

Inclusive of our personally inherent cognitive and neuro-hormonal proclivities, our hopes, fears, and motivations are linkable to our identities, as well as our real or perceived positions and roles in society. This is a critical reality check concept to grasp when analysing why and how people make choices and decisions in life. 

POSTULATION
I state, therefore, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the quagmire facing old retiree African Diasporants regarding where they want to live their last years of life on earth. We can only share our thoughts and experiences, also offer our advice as necessary. It’s condemnable to compel, to judge, to induce guilt, instil fear, manipulate, or even to scam vulnerable Diasporants.

As in everything else in life, there will be those that are very clear as to their choices and plans. Due to various favourable factors such as unhindered access to necessary supportive material and human resources and more, these fortunate ones may be able to execute their choices and plans to desirable outcomes and live happily ever after. For these kinds of people, well, things seem to work out well all the time. Like those privileged classes Diasporants that’ll get to live it up irrespective of whether they choose to live abroad for life or not.

Unfortunately, for many an African Diasporant it’s never so easy. Whereas, say, two separate Diasporant men, each originating from a separate country, might have identical current life situations, e.g.:

• Both married; five children each – youngest children are a sixteen-years-old boy on either side
• Both fifty-five years old
• Both living in the USA for the past thirty years
• Both men and their spouses hold Ivy League universities PhDs in some fields or others
• Both families highly successful. Well-established in the USA. Have invested in property and other ventures back home in Africa. Both with solid philanthropic reputations back home

FORTUNES DIVERGENCES
When it comes to addressing the return-home-or-not retirement question, it’s not a given that the two men and their respective families above will address it similarly despite their mutually relatable obvious successes in the Diaspora. The array of the relational dynamics within each family unit, amongst individual family members regarding their needs and wants, fears, hopes, and expectations is multifaceted. That, to begin with, is more than enough of a challenge to deal with.

The thirty years aspect of living abroad takes a different meaning when viewed with considerations of making major relocating moves. The world and all that live on it change drastically over a thirty-year period. Growing up in specific geographical locations on earth, people are constantly impacted by natural features and processes occurring as characteristic of these places. Needless to say, human relations and resultant sociological formations/ culture will appreciably be reflective of the humans-nature bilateral relationship.

It means that people not only grow up where they do; these places and their unique natural attributes metaphorically grow inside the individuals too. This is expressed, amongst a multitude of others, in how people organize themselves in the gathering and production of food, protection against enemies, reproduction and birthing rituals, raising of children, and land ownership rights determination. Included in this category is the relationship to death, disposal of the dead, as well as mourning and closure rituals. Therefore, it’s not often that people will on the spur of the moment voluntarily just pack and leave places that they have lived in for a long time.     

Things can be even more challenging for the less successful Diasporants confronted with the second migration dilemma. Admittedly, life can be extremely hard for especially poor Diasporants in America, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. For these people, talks of investing back home make no sense.

I can’t imagine a poor Diasporant that’s lived abroad for many years having any meaningful family and friends safety nets back home. So, more often than not, people in this category simply succumb to their misfortunes, get stuck and live life to the end in the Diaspora. Miserable as it may be for some observers. But who is anybody to judge anybody whose inner demons battles and angelic joys nobody’ll ever know?

Some poor Diasporants may have come to the Diaspora already down-trodden from their home-countries. They may have used all sorts of unconventional, if not illegal means to enter the various Diaspora lands. They may have traversed the Sahara on foot; defied the Mediterranean Sea on perilous as can be hardly floating ferries and make-shift boats. In extreme cases, others may be survivors of global human trafficking gangs. The survivors may have been subjected to all sorts of abuse grossly contravening the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter.  

IDENTITY
Both the attainment of opulent living and a pauper existence in the Diaspora are functions of intricate, diametrically opposed circumstances for people; from health, grit, to social intelligence. Much of that shaped by identity and values we carry with us from our socialization training processes in our respective homes in Africa. It is important to remember that identity does not collapse and lock itself into our unilaterality.

In view of their intentions, given what they know or don’t know about a person, third parties might assign the person observed an identity that is not aligned with what the person believes to know about themselves to be. Some African Diasporants never manage to rise above the negative identities that anti-immigrants elements use. The xenophobes use the negative identities to justify harassment and abuse of African people in America, Europe, and elsewhere.

If an anti-Black racist identifies an African person as sub-human, then, the racist will illtreat the Black African with impunity. Dire legal consequences, or worse, might follow here, though. 

In another demeaning, discriminatory context, the same does happen to some not so successful Diasporants that do get to return home after decades abroad, after all. In Zambia, my fatherland, they call them Machona, “the vanishing one”.

MACHONA = DIASPORAN: Emigrant

Machona and Diasporant describe the same phenomenon of people leaving their original homelands. That being for a variety of reasons of own volition, by coercion, or any other factors beyond the people’s control. It’s just that, in our context here, Machona label applies to one that disappears within Africa. Whereas Diasporant is for those that vanish to overseas lands.

Upon his return to Zambia in 1975 after living for an unbroken twenty-eight years’ period in South Africa, my father was not a man of means. Other than his wife and then four kids, he had nothing to show for all those years he had lived and worked supposedly for millions in South Africa. In his mid-forties then, my father was tired. The hardships of life under the then oppressive and exploitative racist Apartheid econo-political system had taken their toll on him.

My father’s immediate and extended family members, like many other people in the Southern African hinterland, were taken by the myth that all benefitted from South Africa’s legendary mega wealth. These people couldn’t understand how, if at all and almost without exception, their relatives returned home from South Africa destitute. Never mind that these now overtly poor people never could send much money home (Black Tax) whilst living and working in South Africa.

My father drew very little sympathy from his people. Some of the people were extremely spiteful, saying and doing obnoxious things towards my father. He took it all with stoicism only half of which would make me a better person if I could muster it. The negative attitudes towards my father spilled over to his wife and children. The consequent mental self-protective wall I built around me meant that I’d never want to have anything to do with these bad people against my father and his wife and kids.

Lacking documentable academic qualifications or professional accreditations, my father blatantly failed to reconnect with modern Zambia. By 1975, Zambia had been a sovereign state since October 24, 1964. The country had made huge sociological transformations unrecognizable from the old Northern Rhodesia my father had left for the neon lights of the golden city of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1947. Zambians ruled. Zambians were royalty in their land. Zambians were Black and proud. This was a whole new world for my father and his nuclear family.

Ba-MACHONA, Ba-Elias(-i)

Applied to my father particularly in the broader family circles, the Machona tag was used derogatorily. It meant that he was a loser with no future in Zambia. To be identified as “Ah, this one is the child of that Machona, ba-Elias” was meant to belittle us, my father’s children. As did “This one is the wife of ba-Machona Elias” referring to my mother. My loser father had brought to Zambia a loser family from South Africa, people used to say. Now, that hurt.

In 1986, my father would return to South Africa. Despite having a new set of challenges in connection with Zambia, my father lived fairly more dignified in South Africa until his demise in 1998. In 1988, I myself packed my bags and left for higher education studies in Norway. I’ve been a Diasporant since then.

MACHONA POVERTY RAMPANT IN SOUTH AFRICA
My father’s plight in Zambia was a common feature amongst numerous other from-South Africa returnee Machonas. Many had it far worse than Pappa and his family. Despite the challenges, my parents did manage to keep their family together. Their three surviving children, Thabo, Sisi, and I have grown up to be alright human beings. My father would on the side beget another son, Nelson. The latter also has defied the odds and has grown up to be a decent human being.

Caught up in poverty-driven toxic family structures already whilst in South Africa, the other struggling returnee Machona families had it really tough. The Zambian fathers, some illiterate, couldn’t function at all in the Zambian labour market. And, besides, the myth of the mighty rich South  African wealth was thought to have been a blessing for the Machonas in the country. So, people couldn’t fathom how it was that anybody could come out poor from South Africa, the land of milk and honey. In the eyes of many a Zambian people, lack of success attainment in South Africa meant that there was something wrong about their unresourceful returnee landsmen. The Diaspora curse at work.

PERSONAL RESOLVE

By the time we got to Lusaka in March 1975, I had already understood that it would be very, very long before we’d return to South Africa. I knew with committed certainty that no matter how long it’d take, though, I would return to South Africa at some point in the future, no matter what.

With time, looking at the hardships and indignities that Pappa and his fellow Machona returnees were subjected to in Lusaka, I knew that I’d never want to return to South Africa as a poor and uneducated man. This resolve informs my stand on the viability or not of my returning home to South Africa, or even Zambia, upon the arrival of my Diaspora retirement time in 2027. Much like my attitude towards marriage and fatherhood, if I know that I’m not durably sufficiently financially strong, I won’t do it; I don’t want it.

YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS
It’s easy to be charmed and convinced by many a YouTube pro-return-home for African Diasporants. Some of these proponents are really good eloquently and in the presentation of their visuals.

• Identity purists are passionate about the African identity. The purists argue that the Diaspora threatens to dilute or even obliterate the identity altogether if African people don’t return home.
• Pan-Afrikanists also want people to come back home to contribute to the efforts of creating a single, united, borderless Africa.
• Business and Economics pragmatists want the Diasporants to not only come back home but to also inject capital in various investments across sectors of their countries’ economies; thereby contributing to national development efforts. As if the Diaspora is an automatic, instant, and continuous capital gifting hand of God, or something. Not even the IMF or the World Bank work like that. Of course. Besides, not everybody is entrepreneurially oriented. Some people are happy just they have salt and water on the table.  

I thoroughly enjoy many of these pro-African Diaspora return home shows on YouTube. That only to the extent that they talk about and show what is possible. I lose interest as soon as I detect a sense of superiority complex and a holier than though attitude pushing propaganda for people to return home at like all costs because “home is home”.

TO EVERYONE THEIR MOTIVATIONS, DREAMS, AND STRENGTHS

The Diaspora is not a sin. The African dream is not for everyone. Neither is heaven; not all of us are holy. People are not stupid. People are different. People are driven by a myriad of intrinsic motivations. People dream their own dreams, see their own dreams for the doable and the impossible. People fight their own demons.

Home for one person may be hell for another. Everyone must be allowed to assess their own life situations before taking a stand on the return-home-or-not African Diaspora dilemma. I fully encourage the expansion of YouTube talks as educational and advisory tools on the matter. Condescendence puts me off. Not everyone is born aristocrat.

For those ex-Diasporants that have made successful returns back home, I wholeheartedly rejoice with and for. Much as I do for those Diasporants that thrive and have decided to settle abroad. The Rock Stars in this regard are those that have managed to reach such levels of success that they can afford to live happily ever after with one foot in the Diaspora and the other back home; dying where the die, buried where they’ll be ultimately. Bravo!

I’m a 65-year-old lone survivor Diasporant in Norway. My official retirement is just a little over a year away. In a perfect world I’d be shuttling between Africa and Norway as a well-off Norwegian pensioner living it up. However, as things are today, I’ll only be able to sustain a reasonably okay living standard by being in one or the other, but not Norway and Africa alternately. And that’ll hold to the extent that I remain childless, single and unmarried. I wouldn’t even afford to keep neither a dog nor a cat. Not that I’d want to keep a pet, though.

To be clear, I don’t hate pets. I love women. I’m too poor to want to get married. Simple. I decide my ability to keep a pet and that of sustaining a happily-ever-after marriage here and now. Investing in this and that back home is out of the question now. I did try during my super economic might years in the early 2000s.

The whole thing broke my financial back lastingly. Almost killed me. Exposed dark sides that I never knew of in my family. I’ve just recently made a last investment attempt that was supposed to turn out as the mother of them all. Alas, it was a scam. Lost much money. Never again big business ventures in Africa for me. I’m tired. I’ve reached and crossed the rat-race finishing line. I’ve got a thousand books to write. Talk about aging with grace.

A whisper tells that there’s a critical minerals rich stretch of land from Eastern Congo to my ancestral land in Eastern Province, Zambia. If I invest US$10K today, another tomorrow, and then, monthly throughout 2026, I’ll be a Billionaire by the time I become a pensioner in Norway in 2027. I tell the whisper, “Go eff yourself; you can have it all!”

I’ve lived in Norway more than half my life. I became a man here. In my time, I’ve done and attained great things that big men do. I’ve experienced profuse joyous manhood exploits here. In the deepest recesses of my heart rest profound pains of loss of, longing for, and denial of seeing my manhood seed sprout to see the light of day in Norway. I’ve cried rivers in here. The rivers have dried. I’ve risen. I’m alive again. Despite the pains. My heart is strong.

Africa is born in me. I’ll be African all my living days. My roots pride will never die. I’ll stay in the Diaspora until I die. It’s my right to choose what feels right for me, for my life. To those the African Diasporants to whom it feels right and has shown to be feasible, go back home and thrive. We all deserve the good we create for ourselves anywhere we thrive in the world, including Guangzhou, even Ouagadougou too. Who is anybody to judge what is right or not for us about our respective solutions to the aging African Diasporants’ dilemma overseas?

This is my story today. The wealth of my future shining ever so bright ahead. The world is my oyster. Only getting started. The Diaspora is my springboard to any corner of the world I want to reach, be it today or tomorrow. From high up in the springboard leap trajectory, I’m free, I’m happy. I look back into the past, the database for all I need for the new opportunities and challenges of the future in the Diaspora and back home. I have no fear. This world is mine. Prove me wrong, if you can; back home or in the Diaspora.   

©Simon Chilembo 02.03.2026

SIMON CHILEMBO
March 19, 2026