High-risk decision-making

This stage corresponds to that of reactive repatriation as described above. In the first year of exile there were apparently many examples of repatriation by people reacting against conditions in exile:

T have a step-mother. She came originally, but then returned after one month.’ (C:41)

’I know of person who went in the first months. He didn’t like exile, and he didn’t like the relish - he wanted fish - so he just went one day.’ (M:24)

Such repatriations were not based upon the consideration of reliable information from the areas of destination, partly because in the first few months at least there were few people remaining in the areas of destination to transmit information. Indeed returns occurred while other refugees were arriving en masse in the camps, and can therefore clearly be seen as high-risk initiatives.

There were no examples of reactive repatriation involving entire families. Normally those involved were elderly relatives who decided alone to return, and often did so against the wishes of the rest of the family. One reactive repatriate, referred to above, returned because she was sick and wanted to die at home, for example. Her case highlights well the fact that these reactive returnees had a short-term perspective of exile. Malawi had been a place to go to escape immediate danger, but not a place to remain. For these repatriates one could not consider that there was any sense of inertia in exile.

8.4.2. M edium -risk decision-making

Several respondents had relatives who were willing to wait in exile at least until some information was received, but were eager to return as soon as possible nevertheless. Not surprisingly, most of these respondents simply could not understand why their relatives had risked going home:

’After two years some (of the villagers) went back: I don’t know why.’ (C:46)

Most of these returnees appear to have had security in the short-term as their prime priority. An example quoted in the preceding chapter was an abortive repatriate who returned with his family because he was told it was now safe, but was forced to return to Malawi following a further attack on his home village. However, other returnees during this stage did already have priorities as well as security; for those cited in the excerpt below, they were clearly of an economic nature:

’Some [of the villagers] went back after two years. They went because they wanted to cultivate their own land.’ (C:85)

Whatever the reason for return, the decisions of early returnees were still relatively risky, for two reasons. First, the quality and quantity of information upon which the decision was based was in most cases poor, and the second reason was the short-term instability and the longer-term unpredictability of conditions in the areas to which they were returning. These are now discussed in turn.

As demonstrated above, it was only in the second year of exile or thereabouts, that individual information networks began to attain any degree of accuracy and reliability. Most of those who returned within the first two years appear to have based their decisions upon generally unreliable and unverified information. The excerpt below is from an interview with a village chief:

’Some [villagers] have returned to Mozambique: approximately sixty. About four years ago the Governor of Mandimba came to the camps and said that it was now safe to return to Mandimba... Those who trusted him returned. For those who didn’t go, it wasn’t so much a case of what they

believed as much as what they could see and hear for themselves’ (C:136)

In this last sentence the chief was referring to the fact that the reports of new arrivals cast considerable doubt upon the claims of the Governor.

However, the risk involved was not only a reliance upon information of inadequate quantity, quality or content, it was also the life-style to which these early returnees were probably aware they were returning. The fact that new arrivals were still coming spoke to the fact that there were still skirmishes in the areas of origin a year after the main attacks. Similarly the absolute dereliction of economic and social infrastructure must have been apparent. It seems that most returnees were aware of such problems, but willing to run the gauntlet:

’My brother, two sisters and mother are now in Nykwanga [Mozambique]...There is still food at home and they’d rather cultivate in fear, occasionally running to the bush, than live in poverty in exile.’ (K:15)

Perhaps the greater risk, however, was the unpredictability of future conditions in the areas of origin for those who returned especially within a year or so of the initial attacks, by which time it cannot have been possible to predict developments. In contrast, those who stayed and developed good information networks were able to receive regular up­ dates of conditions at home, such that a time-lapse impression of the development of conditions could be ascertained.

It is an impossible task to predict who will and who will not take a risk, but as the excerpts below demonstrate respectively, the degree of vulnerability to danger in Mozambique, and personal experience of that danger, were variables:

’My Grandmother came in 1987, then returned after a year. She’s old enough not to be afraid - its only the young who are scared: boys are conscripted and women taken for work’ (K:41)

’Those who went back did so because life is easier in some ways there: there’s plenty of firewood, good food (we prefer pigeon peas as relish).

and its easier to get clothes there. The difference is that people like me had face-to-face contact, and are scared to return’ (M;2)

Returnees in this middle stage can be considered as having a medium-term perspective upon exile. While they were willing to wait for at least some information before making a decision to return, they were unwilling to undergo an interminable exile while waiting for every possible threat to be removed.

There were more entire families involved in repatriation by this stage. By the end of this stage, those families, and those family members, who had high return motivations and were willing to risk return, had by and large done so. There remained a core of conservative potential repatriates with good reasons not to return until necessary. This last stage is one where an inertia in exile could be considered to have set in.