A whenwe is a former British settler or

expatriate An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...

who talks nostalgically about their former homes in colonial

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, i.e.: "when we lived in..." (the origin of the term). The original "whenwes" came from eastern Africa, mostly

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. Being largely of colonial origin, they returned to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

or moved south to

Rhodesia Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...

in the early 1960s. In 1978, Louis W. Bolze and Rose Martin published their satiric cartoon book ''The Whenwes of Rhodesia''.The Whenwes Of Rhodesia
Flickr. Retrieved on 20 February 2013 The next wave of whenwes left Rhodesia about 1980, at the end of the

Rhodesian Bush War The Rhodesian Bush War, also called the Second as well as the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, was a civil conflict from July 1964 to December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe-Rhodesia). The conflict pitted three for ...

. Thousands of

white Rhodesians White Zimbabweans are people in Zimbabwe who are of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers and a small minority ...

moved to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, especially to Natal. The latter nation maintained

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

until 1994.{{cite web , url = http://www.hackwriters.com/PoorAfrica.htm , title = When Wees , year = 2003 , access-date = 2009-09-29 , author = Peter Farrell-Vinay , publisher = Hackwriters

References

African people of British descent Rhodesian diaspora South African English