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Right to education not guaranteed in Copac draft
Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
August 02, 2012

Realizing the importance of education and the need for it to be guaranteed by a nation's supreme law, many countries in Africa and elsewhere have enshrined the right to education in their constitutions. Taking a step in the right direction, the Copac final draft attempted but failed to fully guarantee the right to education in the bill of rights.

The draft begins by making a commitment to education in the National Objectives section, but as this is not enough to guarantee the right to education it goes on to state in the bill of rights that 'every citizen and permanent resident of Zimbabwe has a right to (a) a basic state funded education, including adult basic education, and (b) further education, which the state through reasonable legislation and other measures, must make progressively available and accessible' (4.32(1)).

Had the draft ended there it would have been good, but it proceeds to put a clause within the above-mentioned section which maintains that the state is only to provide for the right to education 'within its available resources.'

It is clear that by putting this clause, the state seeks to provide itself with a backdoor through which to escape when questioned on its inability to fully guarantee the right to education.

This clause is an unacceptable limitation of the above-mentioned right and should be removed; it only serves to provide the state with an easy way to abdicate its responsibility.

Some may argue that ours is a developing country with limited financial resources - though we have an abundance of natural resources - thus it is necessary to put a clause that limits the right to education to availability of resources, but with reference to this, let me be quick to point out that other developing countries such as Ghana and Zambia (2012 draft constitution) do not attempt to limit this right by clauses similar to the one in the Copac draft.

It is saddening to note that the draft only makes use of the clause limiting a right to resources available to the state in terms of education and health but does not do so in terms of the right of war veterans to claim gratuities.

Judging from the history of government extravagance and overspending, one can be forgiven for thinking that the main motive behind this clause is to limit resources to education in order to leave more money for government officials to channel towards their insatiable profligate appetites such as acquiring expensive vehicles and making costly foreign trips on a regular basis.

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