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Threat of prosecution against Independent School Boards
By Hon. David Coltart, MP
February 05, 2004

The threat contained in today’s Herald (attached) must be seen as part of a wider strategy to unsettle middle class urban people, of all races, who are perceived, correctly, as being anti the regime. This threat will not be resolved if schools respond in an uncoordinated, piecemeal, individualistic and weak fashion. Neither will the threat be deal with if schools, or CHIS, think that they can deal with it through appeasement or negotiation. What has happened to the CFU and farmers is a clear demonstration that such measures do not work.

We must also not deceive ourselves into thinking that the regime is not prepared to consider the demise of private education. It has already demonstrated that it is prepared to do anything to remain in power. Most of the ZANU (PF) elite have sufficient money to educate their children elsewhere in any event and they will also probably calculate that a few schools will remain, as has happened in farming.

My advice is to let them prosecute but if they do a test case should be taken up and senior counsel employed from South Africa to challenge the constitutionality of the prosecution and the provisions they will rely on. Simultaneously a public relations campaign should be launched locally and internationally explaining the sinister motives behind this action. Independent economists should be retained to write on the economic/financial predicament faced by schools and such papers should be given widespread publicity. But more than anything else it is vital that a coordinated strategy be agreed to – individual Boards must resist the temptation of thinking they can avoid this by negotiating in isolation.

Counter measures must also be considered. For example if Heads or Chairperson of Boards are arrested consideration should be given to closing the schools down in protest. Lists of all Zanu (PF) parents with children in respective schools should be drawn up so that those parents can be lobbied and advised of the potential consequences of this action. I stress that this should not be done as a threat in any way – they should just be advised that if Heads or Chairpersons are arrested or locked up and schools forced to close, either in protest or because they are no longer viable economically, their own children will suffer.

In closing may I remind you I, over the last few years, have repeatedly made similar pleas (to litigate, to publicise, to understand the sinister political motivation and not to appease or negotiate from a position of weakness) to organisations such as the CFU and other business organisations. These pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears or have been ignored with catastrophic consequences for the farming and business sectors. This is now the next stage in a war being fought by the regime against the people of Zimbabwe. This war is by no means over and is by no means anywhere near won by the regime. In fact this latest action is a further act of desperation by the regime. If we stand together and if we take a firm stand on principle the regime will be defeated, not just in the application of this policy but in its goal to transform Zimbabwe into a totalitarian state.

Yours sincerely,
David Coltart MP

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