Qualified, But Not Quite: Disability, Discrimination & Employment in Zimbabwe

By Simbarashe Namusi

Editor's Note: This is the second and final article in a two-part series on living and working with a disability in Zimbabwe.

I have been qualified for jobs I never got.

Not because I failed the interviews. Not because I failed the tests. Sometimes I suspect I failed something that was never written on the assessment form, the visual test of whether I looked like the person they had imagined doing the job.

About ten years ago, I attended an interview with a local not-for-profit organisation involved in community broadcasting.

The verbal interview went well. Broadcasting was my profession, and I knew what I was talking about.

Then came a typing test.

I was handed a laptop and asked to demonstrate my typing speed. I use one hand to type. I explained this and asked whether I could have some additional time. The request was granted.

But then I heard the murmurs. I heard the gasps. And I knew.

Nothing about the test had established that I could not do the job. I had merely demonstrated that I performed one particular task differently from the other candidates. Yet the atmosphere in the room changed.

Sometimes an accommodation does not convince people that you can do the job. It convinces them that you are a problem they will have to manage.

The Unspoken Visual Assessment

There was another interview, much earlier in my life.

I attended interviews with a local parastatal. I passed the psychometric tests and proceeded to the final interview. When I entered the boardroom, I was asked whether I was the same person who had written the psychometric tests.

I said yes. I watched faces fall.

I passed the interview. I know because someone in Human Resources called me afterwards to apologise. I was told that they had settled for the other candidate because they "looked better."

I had passed the tests. I had passed the interview. Somewhere between competence and appointment, appearance had become part of the qualification.

Then came another experience, much more recently.

A government parastatal called me and invited me for an interview. I accepted. During the conversation, I was asked whether I was a person with a disability. I answered honestly.

The caller told me they had made a mistake calling me.

That was it. The interview disappeared because I had confirmed something that was already visible. There was no test to fail. No interview to perform badly in. No opportunity to demonstrate what I could do.

My disability had become disqualifying before my qualifications could enter the room.

Disability Is Not Inability

I am not asking an employer to pretend that my disability does not exist. I am asking them not to mistake disability for inability. Those are not the same question, and the difference matters.

Inclusion does not mean lowering the standard. It means applying the standard fairly.

A reasonable accommodation does not make a candidate less qualified. Extra time on a typing test does not erase competence. A ramp does not lower the standard for entering a building it removes a barrier.

Too often, disabled people are expected to prove themselves twice: once through the work, and again through the exhausting task of persuading someone that their body will not be an inconvenience.

The High Cost of Exclusion

Eventually, something gives. For me, it was the decision to stop applying for jobs. Not because I stopped being qualified, but because I became tired of volunteering for rooms in which my body might be assessed before my abilities.

Stopping does not feel like peace. It feels like a door closing on work I know I can still do.

The cost of this is not measured only in how many disabled people are unemployed. It is measured in how many qualified people eventually stop applying:

• People who stop explaining why they need an accommodation.

• People who stop believing the next panel will see the person before it sees the disability.

  
  

I do not want the bar lowered for me. I have spent too much of my life proving I can clear it. I simply want the bar to remain in place when I walk into the room.

I am not asking to be hired because I am disabled. I am asking for my disability to stop being the reason I am not hired.

Simbarashe Namusi is a media expert writing in his personal capacity.

Disability discrimination in hiring