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Zimbabwe economic decay hits hard rural school children, teachers
ZimOnline
June 01, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=12201

GOKWE - For 15-year old Cosmos Mabvurauta, attending school is a daily test of endurance in this remote district of Gokwe in north-western Zimbabwe.

Mabvurauta, who is in still in primary school, must wake up early each morning and grope his way in the dark to school some 20 kilometres away.

The boy literally trots along the tortuous bush path to Mangisi Primary School, a run-down school that is clearly a microcosm of the general collapse of Zimbabwe's once revered education system.

"It is a daily test of endurance to get education here," says 46-year old Ntandazo Mabvurauta while welcoming his son back from school just before sunset.

"Every day, the children trudge home hungry and tired. You can actually feel for them," he says with a look of deep anguish on his face. "It is a real battle to get some measure of education under these trying circumstances for the kids."

Mabvurauta says most parents in the district are delaying sending their children to school until they are nine years old in a bid to "protect" their children's weak limbs. Most children in Zimbabwe start primary school when they turn six.

Zimbabwe is often praised for having one of the best literacy rates in Africa with the country's citizens being seen as among the best educated on the African continent, thanks to President Robert Mugabe's early magnanimous policies after independence.

The veteran Zimbabwean president does not let an opportunity pass without gloating over his government's successes in eradicating illiteracy and widening the horizons of knowledge among citizens.

But sadly, such gains scored during the early days of the country's independence, are facing serious reversal particularly in rural Zimbabwean schools.

Most buildings at rural schools have been so worn out after years of neglect that they are almost disintegrating. But the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe - one of two unions that represent teachers in the country - says it is in Gokwe where the crisis and hardships affecting education and Zimbabwe in general are in full view.

"One really needs to visit Gokwe in order to appreciate the harsh conditions teachers and school children have to battle against in the district," says union secretary general Raymond Majongwe.

"School children are walking long distances of as far as 22 kilometres to reach school where they take their lessons under a tree or in makeshift classrooms," he added.

The state of near-total-collapse of most rural schools in Zimbabwe reflects a general collapse of the economy that began in 2000 after Mugabe sanctioned the violent take-over of white-owned farms, a move that crippled the agriculture sector, the country's biggest foreign currency earner.

And six years down the line after Mugabe's chaotic and often violent land reforms, Zimbabweans are reaping the whirlwind as epitomised by the appalling levels of decay at most schools in Gokwe.

"Clinics are few and far between. At one of the schools that we visited, at least two teachers were down with malaria," says Majongwe.

A teacher at the school, Phyllis Hlomayi says while life is difficult at their school, her colleagues at a school in the same district are even worse off. She says her colleagues at the other school have to foot almost 40 kilometers to catch transport to get to the nearest business centre in Gokwe to buy provisions such as food and stationery.

"At least we are lucky here," she says.

One could not help but discern a sense of bitterness in the hearts of most people spoken to in Gokwe.

As Mabvurauta puts it: "The government has done little to alleviate our problems here. But Mugabe does not relent crediting himself with bringing about a phenomenal increase in the number of schools since 1980."

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