As most Magical Buffet readers know, I have a bit of an axe to grind about Zimbabwe. I won’t bog you down with links here. If you don’t know the history, just go to The Buffet’s home page and click on politics in the column on the right hand side of your screen. But consider yourself warned, I started all of this way back in July 2008! Goodness I’ve been talking about Zimbabwe for a damned long time!
I’m here to discuss one of my more recent posts on the subject. In November 2010 I sent a letter “across the pond” to Matthew Coats and Damian Green about Britain resuming enforced returns of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe. I thought I made some pretty eloquent points, if I do say so myself.
As an aside, that post is particularly special to me because if you look in the comments section you’ll see someone from Britain left a comment that ends with “Keep your nose out of British politics and decisions – you do not pay for the assorted wandering nomad immigrants who decide to dump themselves in Britain – I am forced to finance them.” A few years I ago I may have panicked, thinking, oh no, I upset someone. However my immediate response to seeing this comment instead was, oh my God! Someone in Britain is reading my blog? Sweet. For a while I was getting pretty regular visits from the U.K. I just assumed it was that guy looking to see if I responded to his comment. Sorry fella’, this is as close to a response as you’re going to see. And that day was when I realized I must truly be a blogger.
Where the heck was I? Oh yes, me writing to Britain about enforced returns of failed asylum seeker to Zimbabwe. A country that has the sad fate of possessing no oil, and having no A List celebrities adopting children from there, so the United States will continue to do nothing besides remind the country that we have targeted sanctions on President Mugabe and others. Oh, was that out loud? Good. I’m pretty bitter about it. (By the way, The Daily Show also wonders about America’s “Freedom Packages”.) Anyway, here’s where I’m trying to go with this. In that letter to Coats and Green I mention X Factor contestant Gamu Nhengu who was facing deportation.
Well, on May 11, 2011 BBC News published this. Yep, “X Factor’s Gamu Nhengu wins right to stay in the UK”. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t much of anything. My letters definitely had nothing to do with it. But you know what? I’m going to just sit back, smile, and call it a win anyway. Some days, you just have to take what you can get.