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Education no longer a right in Zimbabwe
Webster Zambara
May 14, 2006

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=21&id=808&siteid=1

As schools opened for the second term there was no joy at all. Instead, there was anger and trauma in pupils and students, parents and guardians as well as school authorities. This is against a tapestry of massive fee hikes coupled with sharp rises in prices of school uniforms and all the necessities required in an educational set up.

There are three things that preceded the beginning of the second school term that advance my thesis in this article. In Bulawayo, 70 children and 112 women were held by the police for demonstrating against school fee increases.

In Harare 48 college students were detained, allegedly for not respecting the portrait of President Robert Mugabe. It was also reported in this paper a child led coalition of children’s organizations, Child and Youth Budget Network, would like to organize massive demonstrations by children in order to force the government to reverse fee increases. I will try to analyse these demonstrations separately although the fact that they derive from the same thinking and feeling, hoping for the same output, is obvious.

The underlying issue is that these Zimbabweans will not genuflect as their dignity and rights to education are systematically stripped from them. And to me as a conflict worker these are just symptoms of much deeper underlying conflicts that have not been resolved. And without beating about the bush, it is our economy, stupid!

For Minister Aeneas Chigwedere to come out in the open trying to put the blame on school authorities is like trying to hide behind his finger. When we had a normal economy we never experienced such massive increases in both government and private institutions. When we got our independence we promised each other that everyone had a right to education and primary education would be for free.

Whether making it free was the best option is not the issue, but I personally benefited from it because I was a deserving citizen. I recall very well at Chiguhune Primary School in Gutu district in 1980 that on the first day at school I would receive all the required textbooks and exercise books, including the wrappers, better known as khaki covers. When my ball point pen was finished, I would simply go with the emptied ‘re-fills’ for replacement. At break-time we would have mahewu. Pupils in urban areas tell of receiving pints of milk and candy cakes at break time.

Our duty when we went to school was to learn. No one would starve.

I also recall vividly that at one time my two sisters and I were attending boarding schools when our dear father, Nicholas Zambara, was only a primary school teacher back in Gutu but he could still afford to pay for us.

Now as schools opened last week most civil servants had earned around $10million. I am therefore not surprised when Women of Zimbabwe Arise and their children took to the streets to protest because they themselves (mothers) were exercising their right to education. They get frustrated if that right is denied their children. And the children have the right to sympathise with their mothers because it is for their cause as well.

I watched with a heavy heart when Chigwedere was on local news on our one and only broadcasting station. He had the audacity to tell the nation that there is no law that says a child may be sent back home because he or she does not have uniform. This coming from a qualified teacher like him? I am a retired teacher myself and I know the classroom environment from a professional point. Such a child would be traumatised and that will affect performance. And how would the parents and guardians feel? By the way, who wanted to introduce one uniform for all schools not long ago?

As I am writing this article, there is jambanja at Bindura University, and thirty-nine students have been arrested. While government has hiked tertiary fees, payouts have not been increased. Naturally students feel short -changed, and their academic endeavours have been jeopardised. Education is no longer a right, but a privilege for a few who can afford.

When I personally went through the system, we would receive our education on a government loan that we would pay back after completion of our studies. Now the economy is in such tatters that the government knows all these graduates will not be employed, thus recovery of the loans will be difficult, and students are the pawns! So it’s the economy, simple.

But even when the economy was good, the government was so lazy to collect the loans. Or rather incompetent, or both. Look at this: government gave me a loan and later employed me as a teacher. It had to hire a private firm called Magfair to collect its loans from me, its employee! Anyone who attained tertiary education in the past two decades can bear witness.

And when young children threaten to demonstrate against fee hikes and general economic hardships, then our dead did not see anything. Chave Chimurenga!

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