WILL the African brain drain stop now that Robert Mugabe’s iron grip over Zimbabwe is finally over? Will the attention of the international community wander or remain focused on the difficult task of helping a new democratic Zimbabwe to emerge from decades of repression?

And will politicians from the developed north stop recruiting trained Zimbabweans to menial jobs in Britain and the rest of Europe?

These questions flew through my mind as I watched the scenes of elation and exuberance following news of Mugabe’s long overdue fall from power. Of course, you’d have to be made out of stone not to empathise with the long-supressed explosion of optimism and joy. But the character of the man who will succeed Mugabe gives major cause for concern.

Emmerson Mnangagwa – whose sacking precipitated the army coup – was national security chief in the 1980s when thousands of Zimbaweans died in post-independence conflict. Among other atrocities, villagers were forced at gunpoint to dance on the freshly dug graves of their relatives and chant pro-Mugabe slogans. One veteran of that time, who worked with Mnangagwa, said: “He’s a very cruel man, very cruel.”

And that’s why it’s important the international community nudges the new Zimbabwean regime firmly on to a democratic path. Mnangagwa must understand that any continuation of Mugabe’s corruption and tyranny means Zimbabwe will forfeit the international aid and investment that can rescue its shattered economy.

Admittedly it’s 15 years since I last visited Zimbabwe – the year Mugabe banned BBC and (in a less publicised move) independent local journalists for reporting “lies” about the “land redistribution” programme that saw war veterans take white farmers’ land – sometimes by force.

I was running a charity called Africawoman at the time – we used British Council cash to train women journalists in eight African countries via a monthly online publication using a “virtual newsroom”. Zimbabwe was one of the eight member countries and when I visited the country its problems, potential and beauty were all immediately apparent.

Traffic in the capital Harare was often chaotic because “robots” or traffic light bulbs were stolen for domestic use and manhole covers were melted down and turned into pots. Zimbabwe was a cashless society back then – I understand it still is – and with unemployment running at 80 per cent, the “Zimb dollar” was effectively worthless.

I remember one young Zimbabwean journalist at a training event in Uganda who was reduced to tears when a small barrow-load of her native currency was contemptuously turned away at a food stall. Unknown to me, she then checked out of her hotel room, got a refund in dollars and “lived” in a shed for the duration of the training event. All of which meant this desperate but determined young Zimbabwean mother saved enough to feed her children for a month.

Back then, Harare pavements were often covered with street-stalls selling schoolbooks, car maintenance manuals and college textbooks. Zimbabweans have one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, the product of a radical Cuba-style emphasis on mass education during Mugabe’s early days. You might think such standards might have helped Zimbabweans forced to flee the Mugabe regime – sadly it rarely turned out that way.

One of the young journalists I met in Harare – Sandra Nyaira – was awarded a Chevening Scholarship in London in 2002. It was a stroke of luck, because back in Zimbabwe, Mugabe arrested every senior journalist and director at her paper, the Daily News.

The Daily News was Zimbabwe’s biggest-selling and only non-government-controlled paper and Geoffrey Nyarota was its bold, outspoken editor. He survived several death threats and published details of one attempt when a man was apparently offered £1670 to use “a simple weapon like an axe” on him. Mercifully that assailant got “cold feet” but a few months later, a hand grenade exploded under Nyarota’s office. He survived – but was arrested six times before Mugabe closed the paper down.

This was the “normal” working environment for 28-year-old Sandra Nyaira – forced to become a tough cookie at an early age and one of the first female political editors in Africa. Six months in the relative calm of London should have been a welcome period of respite – but after the mass arrest of her colleagues it became clear Sandra suddenly faced exile. She applied for and received political asylum in Britain and was awarded the International Women’s Media Foundation Award for Courage in Journalism in 2002. Despite this impressive CV, Sandra was unable to find work as a journalist outside Africawoman, and started working in care homes in London where she met other exiled Zimbabweans.

Fortune Tadya, for example, was a 28-year-old business studies graduate with five years’ experience at one of the most prestigious banks in Zimbabwe. She got a scholarship to a London university, but after graduation she lost count of applications made to find a job that matched her qualifications.

By the time she met Sandra in 2005, Fortune had given up and was working full-time in a fast-food shop by day and part-time in hospitals and old folks’ homes at night. Fortune and Sandra both sent money back to Zimbabwe to help finance school and housing for families they knew they would never see again – until Robert Mugabe and his regime were overthrown.

So, today, I know both women will be celebrating. But will they return? I haven’t managed to contact Sandra yet – but last year she got a job as communications officer at the United Nations in Washington.

So Sandra faces a tough choice. Geoffrey Nyarota, too. He also fled to the United States where he has been publishing an online paper, the Zimbabwean Times, while in exile.

THERE’S no doubt Zimbabwe needs Sandra, Geoffrey, Fortune and the thousands of other skilled men and women recruited during the Mugabe years to work in the north. A survey by the University of Zimbabwe medical school in 2003 estimated that more than 80 per cent of doctors, nurses and therapists graduating since independence in 1980 had left to work in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. At the time, Mugabe accused Britain of “stealing” staff but Zimbabweans disputed that.

One doctor said: “We are seeking better pay and better standards. No-one can blame us for that. The government would rather spend money on the army and on riot-control vehicles and on new Mercedes-Benz.

“If some of that money was spent on the health system and our salaries, then we could stay.”

So Britain could help the new Mnangagwa-led government tackle this brain drain by ensuring any new aid and investment package is linked to better conditions for Zimbabwe’s key workers.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Aid budgets are often linked to military contracts in mutual back-scratching operations involving British arms manufacturers, politicians and corrupt African regimes.

But surely there is a moral obligation on former colonial states such as Britain to try harder now? As the late Nobel Peace Prize-winning Professor Wangari Maathi of Kenya once said: “In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.”

Amen.