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Question Time with Education Minister David Coltart - Part 2
Lance Guma, SW Radio Africa
December 01, 2010

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This is part 2 of the interview between SW Radio Africa journalist Lance Guma and the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart. It features listener's questions on leaked confidential US diplomatic reports, friction between Coltart and war vets over his Gukurahundi comments, his views on the victimization of Roy Bennett, the whereabouts of 13 million text books donated by UNICEF and how contracts for the supply of primary school textbooks were awarded.

Lance Guma: Good evening Zimbabwe and thank you for joining us on Part Two of the Question Time interview with the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Senator David Coltart. Senator, thank you for joining us once again.

David Coltart: Thanks Lance, good evening to you.

Guma: Now what a week for politicians around the world with the web site WikiLeaks leaking confidential US government diplomatic cables. We had former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell - he had some pretty damning things to say about Zimbabwe's leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai, Professor Arthur Mutambara, Professor Welshman Ncube who's from your party Senator. Just to begin the programme what did you make of those disclosures at a personal level?

Coltart: Well at a personal level I think the bottom line is that none of us would want our private conversations or thoughts published to the entire world. That applies to individuals, it applies to governments, certainly applies to diplomats. All of us say in private things that we would never say about other people in public and that is why I think that we need to be mature about what Christopher Dell has reported on.

I know it's easy for me to say this because from the leaks so far, my own name hasn't been mentioned and perhaps (laughs) something may be revealed in weeks to come which will affect me more directly but for those who have been criticised we need to recognise that he's been critical of everyone.

He's very critical of Robert Mugabe, of Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and as we've seen from these leaks worldwide, they've been critical of Prince Andrew and that's the nature of private communications. It happens the world over. I have no doubt that what our own embassies report back on, from London back to Zimbabwe is probably just as horrendous and we need to move on from this.

Guma: What do you make though of this web site leaking this information? Do you think it's unethical, do you think it's good for democracy like some are saying? Just your thoughts on that?

Coltart: Well it's the classic debate between freedom of expression on the one hand and the need to protect the public and national security on the other hand. As you know I gave the Lozikeyi Lecture recently in Bulawayo when I looked at what the limits of freedom of expression are in a Zimbabwean context in relation to Gukurahundi.

And the same applies to these leaks -on the one hand yes it's wonderful that we can see these private communications and judge America's private thoughts against their public actions but on the other hand the real danger is that people are put at risk through this type of communication.

Often people go to embassies in private, knowing that their communications will be dealt with in confidence and it is those communications that often lead to the resolution of wars and other problems in the world and if people don't have that confidence then we may arrive at a situation in the world where it's a lot harder to resolve crises like that and that's where we see the limits of freedom of expression.

What I think I would, if I'd been asked for advice on the matter is for the WikiLeaks people to exercise a bit more discretion. Where leaks are going to jeopardise innocent people, then I don't believe that those leaks should be made. If the intention of this is to expose perhaps American hypocrisy then the leaks should be done in a way that achieves that goal without actually hurting innocent people.

Guma: Several weeks ago you were in the news when war vets demanded a meeting with you over your statements that Gukurahundi was akin to genocide. Now the comical Joseph Chinotimba is leading the charge and we are told gave you a seven-day ultimatum to apologise. The first question comes from Albert in Bulawayo who wants to know what happened and whether this matter has now been resolved?

Coltart: I think the matter has been resolved, in response to Albert. The war veterans demanded a meeting with me, I was happy to meet with them. I met with them in the prime minister's office building two weeks ago. I had a one hour and a quarter meeting with a group of war veterans including Joseph Chinotimba.

We had a very frank mutual exchange of views and in my mind we reached a satisfactory conclusion to it. I did not apologise either to them or indeed publicly but I think as well I was able to explain to them that my address didn't just focus on Gukurahundi in isolation but looked at the whole gamut of human rights abuses perpetrated in this country in the last hundred years.

I explained to them that I've never been a person to look at Gukurahundi in microcosm. I believe it's a great tragedy that we never had a truth and reconciliation commission at the advent of independence. And I think once I'd been given an opportunity to explain that full context to them, I think it took some of the wind out of their sails and I think that the matter has now been resolved.

Guma: A few weeks ago Joseph Chinotimba was quoted in an interview that was done by the Newsday newspaper saying he wanted your job as Education minister and at every turn he took opportunities to attack you which brings us to the next question.

We saw for instance the war vets accusing you and Roy Bennett of being unrepentant, jeopardising the livelihoods of white commercial farmers that have remained on the farms.

Tinashe Madamombe in Harare says you and Roy Bennett are unique in being the two white Zimbabweans to be nominated in this coalition government - his question is what do you make of the treatment that Roy (Bennett) has received over the years and why, in your assessment, has he been targeted in this manner? I think he's referring to the non-swearing in and the court case.

Coltart: Well I'm sure that much of it has to do with the different parties we represent. Roy is a member of a much larger political party than I am and to that extent constitutes I'm sure because of that a much greater threat than I do.

I don't fully understand the extent of the venom directed against Roy because if you look at my record in the last 27 years, I've been just as outspoken as Roy has been over those 27 years and so it doesn't seem to have much to do what we've said regarding ZANU PF. So in conclusion, I don't fully understand why ZANU PF has reserved such venom for Roy.

I think to be frank, as individuals, Roy because of his fluency in Shona, because he comes from the north east of the country, is a far more powerful political individual than I am and I suppose to that extent I suppose on a personal level they probably perceive him as a much greater political threat than I could ever pose.

Guma: Well Gift Phiri in Harare wants to know why students in rural areas are doing better than those in urban areas and his second question is where are the 13 million textbooks donated by UNICEF in September?

Coltart: Well that question is in two parts; the discrepancy between rural and urban areas - he says that children are doing better in rural areas than urban areas - there are some statistics that support that view, there are other statistics that do not support that view.

For example if you look at the Grade Seven examination results, the pass rate in the two urban provinces of Harare and Bulawayo are much higher than the pass rate in the remaining eight predominantly rural provinces. I think the problem that we face in the education sector is that our data is highly problematic.

My own view is that actually there is an increasing gulf between rural and urban based schools, we have much higher percentages of qualified teachers in urban schools than we do in rural schools and so I would question this assumption that actually children are doing better in rural schools.

I fear that this statistic may have emerged from the O level results. Children in rural boarding schools tend to get better O level results than children at day schools in urban areas simply because they can focus better on the job in these rural boarding schools. They have a much greater opportunity of scoring better results but I don't believe that is an accurate indicator regarding the difference between rural and urban education.

Let me just conclude by making this point - the education sector as a whole is in a crisis, both in the rural and urban areas. We've got a lot of work to do to stabilise it and to that extent I think to nit-pick between rural and urban results is unhelpful. The sector is in crisis overall and really needs to be assisted throughout the country. Would you just remind me of the second question?

Guma: Yes, his second question is where are the 13 million textbooks donated by UNICEF in September?

Coltart: Regarding the 13 million textbooks - all 13 million textbooks have now been printed and the majority of them are still being held at the distribution centre which is at the back warehouse on the Beatrice Road in Harare.

We had enormous logistical problems initially in distributing these books. We've never done a distribution of books on this scale in Zimbabwe ever before and what we've learnt is that the easy part of the exercise was actually getting the books printed.

That's the negative side, the positive side is that having gone through these teething problems, UNICEF has now managed to speed up the process of distribution fairly dramatically in the last two to three weeks.

We were only distributing to some 80 schools per week, two weeks ago that had gone up to 500 schools per week and I understand that they're aiming to distribute in the coming weeks to as many as 700 schools per week. We are behind schedule but our intention is to have distributed books to all 5500 primary schools before the commencement of the first term next year.

Guma: Now there's a listener in Harare who wants to query why did the ministry grant a monopoly to only one publisher? I think in this case it's Longmans, to supply primary school textbooks. They go on to say is this desirable for the long term sustainability of the book industry in Zimbabwe and I think the third thread to their question is what impact will this have on the local publishing industry in which publishers previously competed between each other to produce the best, most appropriate textbooks?

Coltart: I'm pleased that that question has been raised because it has been the subject of a lot of debates within the country. In answering all three facets of that question I need to give some background to your listeners.

When I took office, the education sector was in a state of extreme crisis and that was no more so than in the textbook/pupil ratios. In most schools at best, the textbook/pupil ratio was 15 to one. In many schools, especially in rural areas, the only textbook in an entire classroom would be the one that the teacher had and in many schools not even the teacher had a textbook for a particular subject so I came into a situation of extreme crisis and we had to move urgently on this.

What we did initially was to go to the three publishing houses - Longmans, College Press and Zimbabwe Publishing House ZPH and we explained the nature of the crisis - that it was a national crisis, that if we didn't address this as a matter of extreme urgency and that primary school children in particular would become a lost generation to Zimbabwe.

We explained that because of limited resources we wanted the publishing houses to cut their profits to the bone, that we didn't want windfall profits, we asked them to go away and to come back to us so that we could reach agreement with all three publishing houses to ensure that the existing market share was respected.

Unfortunately what happened was that a cartel was formed. They came back to us with figures that were quite frankly ridiculous that added a premium of some ten million US dollars to the price that we were expecting to pay for these textbooks.

Because of that we were then, and when I say we, this wasn't just the Ministry of Education, the lead was taken by UNICEF. The money had been allocated to UNICEF to manage and to that extent we had to work with UNICEF but UNICEF and ourselves agreed that we could not contract with the publishing houses, that we would have to go to a commercial tender and that is what happened.

It went to commercial tender and that resulted in an award to the company tendering who gave the best price and that price happened to be put in by Longmans, by one of the publishing houses which came in with a price that literally saved the overall cost by a figure of ten million US dollars.

They came in well below, overall, the other two publishing houses and on a purely commercial basis UNICEF awarded the contract to one publishing house, namely Longmans.

From an educational perspective we were of course alarmed by that because as your listeners will know, teachers are used to using particular text books and from an educational perspective it certainly wasn't beneficial to have textbooks from one publishing house sent to schools countrywide to many teachers who may never have used those textbooks before.

The problem that we faced though was that we had tried to get a reasonable spread but ultimately because of this cartel operating we had to go to a commercial tender to get the cheapest price.

Guma: OK.

Coltart: Turning to the other aspects of the publishing industry - having learnt the experience of the primary school, we've now, two things have arisen from this - firstly we've been able to demonstrate to the publishing houses what it costs to produce a textbook.

Primary school textbooks were being sold between two and three, sometimes as high as five US dollars per textbook. The final price that emerged from the tender was that textbooks can be produced for an average price of 70 US cents.

So we've demonstrated that to the publishing houses that that is the price that we will look at as a reasonable price to pay. So we hope that when we get to the secondary school process that the publishing houses will not look to make these windfall profits.

The second thing that we've done is that we have now had sufficient time which we didn't have in the primary school process to conduct a survey. Bear in mind that we didn't know with any accuracy which school used the textbooks of which publishing house when it came to the primary school exercise.

We've done that for the secondary school exercise and we will now be able to ensure because we've got a bit more time on our hands that we do actually get the secondary school exercise the particular textbooks from particular publishing houses to particular schools. In that way, we will deal with the educational issue but also we will ensure the long-term survival of all three of these publishing houses and hopefully others.

Guma: Our final question for you Minister comes from Vickie Nkomo who wants to know if there's anything in place to support the individuals who don't do well in their O levels? What programmes or other qualifications are being promoted to encourage them to educate themselves further regardless of doing well in their O levels?

Coltart: Once again an excellent question and this has been a huge gap in our education system in the last ten to 15 years. Many children have fallen out, let's not just talk about children falling out at O level, the drop-out rate between primary schools and secondary schools is horrendous in this country and we need to devise a policy that is going to ensure that these children who are now out of school, who don't have basic literacy and numeracy levels can receive some education out of school to bring those literacy and numeracy levels up.

And the fourth key strategic intervention plan in the overall strategic plan that was submitted to Cabinet on the 7th of September and accepted by Cabinet, addresses this very issue.

We have allocated money in the budget this year to devise programmes so that we can identify as many of these children who are now out of school and to either develop a programme of night classes or other classes based on the old adult literacy classes so that we can attract some of these children back into a learning environment and deal with this problem.

The real danger that we face in Zimbabwe because of the chaos of the last ten years is that we are left with a lost generation of children who have very basic or non-existent literacy and numeracy levels who become very frustrated and then resort to crime. We saw what happened in South Africa when as the result of apartheid/Bantu education, there was a lost generation and it causes massive problems in society which we simply cannot allow to happen in Zimbabwe.

Guma: Well that's the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart joining us on the second part of this Question Time interview. Senator thank you so much for your time.

Coltart: Thank you Lance, it's always a pleasure being with you.

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