• Our great Zimbabwe cricket team flies into New Zealand today and goes with our very best wishes. #
• England 46 for 5 with Mohammed Hafeez and Saeed Ajmaal doing far more damage to England than did against Zimbabwe. Zim cricket on the up! #
• Well, well England succumb to Pakistan at cricket within 3 days whereas Zimbabwe fought them hard into the 5th day; time for Eng to play Zim #
• Congratulations to ZIMSEC Board & staff for getting A level exam results out on time – can be collected at all schools countrywide on Monday #
• England agonising over loss to Pakistan – they should take some tips from Zim's Mawoyo who had the measure of Ajmal – http://t.co/pd5UZV1s #
• #Celtic 12 wins in a row and 5 points clear of the Scottish Premier league – what a team to support..aside from Highlanders that is! #
• Feeling sad that Zimbabwe is not playing in #AFCON – great challenge to sort out Zimbabwe football but we must do it – we got so much talent #
• Zimbabwe 328 for 9 at close of day 2 – a 56 run advantage over a strong NZ XI – good stuff lads! Chakabva on 87 not out. #

Guernica

By Petina Gappah

17 January 2012

If Zimbabwe were human, the country would need more years of therapy than its 30 years of independence. According to Foreign Policy, in 2010, Zimbabwe was fourth on the “Failed State Index.” In 2006, it was declared to be the unhappiest place on earth—ahead of Zimbabwe on the “Happiness Index” were countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and North Korea. In 2008, it had inflation rates not seen since the Weimar Republic: prices of goods changed as customers walked to the tills. By any measure, Zimbabweans should just have given up, switched off what little lights remained burning, and hightailed it to the nearest border.

Zimbabwe’s collapse is jarring because it has been so fast. Particularly, in education, where it once led all of Africa, Zimbabwe has had a dizzying fall. The papers are full of stories of teachers at government schools threatening to strike, of pupils being sent home for not paying school fees, of overcrowded classrooms and poorly maintained schools.

At the beginning of last year, I planned to write about the state of education in coalition Zimbabwe. In September 2008, Zimbabwe woke to a new chapter in its history. For the first time since independence, Zanu PF, the party of the rooster emblem, was no longer cock of the walk. Mugabe’s party entered into a power-sharing arrangement with the MDC, the opposition party that has sworn to reverse the economic decline. Ministerial portfolios were divvied up between the three parties to the coalition. The Ministry of Education, or, to give it its full name, The Ministry of Education, Sport, Art, and Culture, went to the smaller of the two MDC parties, and is headed by David Coltart, a lawyer and senator from Bulawayo. Senator Coltart is known as one of the most accessible of the ministers. His door was open when I walked in to tell him about my project, and to ask for his permission to visit government schools.

My initial plan had been to go to all of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces, and visit two primary schools and two secondary schools in each province. I soon came to realize that bureaucracy had not quite caught up with the reality of the new coalition government. The head of the first government school I visited would not see me because I did not have the authority of the provincial head.

“But the Minister signed my letter,” I protested and produced the letter signed by Senator Coltart.

Not good enough, clearly.

“That letter was not signed by the provincial director,” I was told.

I went to Chester House in Harare to see the Provincial Director, a small man in an over-furnished office who put a stamp on it, signed it, and wrote, “APPROVED” above his signature, effectively approving his boss’s approval. After that, I had to see the District Officer, a smiling woman with a complicated hairstyle who put down her tea and biscuits to stamp the minister’s letter, appending her own approval to the other two approvals. A friend who works closely with the Ministry of Education shrugs when I tell him this anecdote. He explains that the Senator’s Permanent Secretary—said to be a staunch Zanu PF supporter—is apparently involved in a war of attrition with his MDC minister, almost, my source says, as though he does not want the minister to succeed.

I decide to limit my visits to the schools to which I have a personal connection: a writer visiting her old schools to write about them, I reason, is an entirely different thing to an unknown person walking into strange schools, even with ministerial approval.

Besides, I am lucky to have gone to five schools in Zimbabwe, six if I include the University of Zimbabwe.

“Why so many?” my photographer, Rudo Nyangulu asks.

I explain to her that I am of the generation that started school in Rhodesia, continued in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and finished in Zimbabwe. Those were the days of social mobility, of dismantled racial barriers. I did the first year of my primary education at Chembira Government Primary School, did Grade 2 at Kundai Government Primary School, and then did Grades 4 to 7 at Alfred Beit Primary School before completing my secondary education at St. Dominic’s Secondary School and St. Ignatius’ College. It is to these old schools that Rudo and I turn in the company of our driver, Innocent.

My first school was Chembira School, the first government primary school to be built in Glen Norah, a black township established in the early 1970s. There were more children than there were school places, which meant that about 80 pupils shared a classroom, with a group of children coming to school in the mornings and another in the afternoons. Until the classroom cleared, my classmates and I sat under a tree with our teacher. “Hot seating” only ended when a new school opened the following year.

What Zimbabwe did particularly well in the first twenty years of its life was to correct the racial injustice that had denied quality universal education to the majority of the country’s black children.

Behind the administration block is the tap from where we drank water in our cupped hands. “A DAY IN SCHOOL IS A GAIN ON ETERNITY” says a notice on the board inside the reception. Below this is a large poster outlining the school’s plans for the next five years, the most ambitious being to build a new block of classrooms. When I tell the deputy headmistress that I am an old pupil, she welcomes me with a hug of delight, especially when I mention where I have been since 1978. This being Zimbabwe, it turns out that she knows one of my aunts—they did their teacher training together in the 70s.

Hot seating is back again as there are simply too many children for the available classrooms—1, 315 in all. Glen Norah is in the catchment area of the Hopley Farm informal settlement, she explains, which means that they have many children from very poor families. The BEAM programme is important for them, the deputy head says, and shows me a group of parents assisting in sorting through applications in the staff room.

By the BEAM programme, she means the “Basic Education Assistance Module,” a donor-funded scheme that aims to ensure that children from poor families stay in school: it is aimed at what its multilateral donors call OVCs—orphans and other vulnerable children. They have their fees and levies paid for them and are supplied with uniforms and stationery.

“But what about children not covered under the BEAM? Would you expel children whose parents cannot pay fees?’ I ask.

There have been several stand-offs between schools and the Ministry, with the latter insisting that schools cannot expel children for not paying fees, while schools point out that without fees, they are unable to run. In addition to the government-set school fees of about 20 dollars for a term of three months, there is the “development levy,” which varies from small amounts at the poorer schools to hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars at the better-off schools. The levy is charged directly by each School Development Association—the SDAs are made up of parents and teachers. Faced with a perpetually broke government, the SDAs have been the drivers of school development. In fact, the plan to build a new classroom block at Chembira is an SDA project.

“We do not expel children,” the deputy headmistress says. “You find that many such children have just one parent, and so, even if they are not orphans exactly, they will be covered somehow.”

She tells me that the SDA levies at Chembira have enabled them to pay for two extra teachers, and for their Traditional Dance coach. The school has won the country’s leading Traditional Dance competition for school children. Last year, Chembira came top in the whole country, she tells me proudly.

“We are doing really well. We have an excellent coach,’ she beams, “Someone who really believes in his job.”

Does the same commitment extend to the classroom, I ask. Are their teachers as committed to excellence as the dance coach?

“There are challenges,’ she admits. “There are simply not enough teachers for all the children.”

As we walk around the school, I meet the two oldest teachers; they must have been there when I was, I prod them eagerly for memories of my old teacher, but 1978 is too far in the past. Our tour of the school coincides with break-time. The children, eager for any diversion, follow us around. Rudo’s camera is like a magnet; they jostle to have their pictures taken. As the deputy headmistress tries to keep the children at a distance, I ask her about the pressures facing the schools. She tells me what I will hear at the two other primary schools I will visit: that the Grade Zero classes are adding pressure to already pressured schools.

In 2005, the government introduced an Early Development class, ECD, informally called Grade Zero. It was intended to address the reality that not all parents could afford to send their children to crèches, which were all privately run and tended to be expensive. The idea was that all children should, before the formal start of primary school, be equipped with the social skills they need to start school.

A wonderful initiative in theory, but, as with many things in Zimbabwe, the devil was in the implementation. The government did not build more classrooms to accommodate Grade Zero children, who need toys, picture books and specialized learning aids. In the first few years, there were no teachers who were properly qualified in early childhood development. Many government schools were already struggling with too many children, falling infrastructure and indifferent and unmotivated teachers, if they were not absent. Grade Zero has thus added more children to schools without accompanying improvements in infrastructure.

“We really want to educate poor children but we can’t educate anyone without money, no?” says Sister Elizabeth.

I remark to the deputy head that Chembira has the same number of toilets it had 30 years ago.

“That’s when they are working,” she says, ominously.

We visit the Grade Zero classroom. It is the room that was once the library, and still has LIBRARYwritten on the door. Efforts have gone into making it cheerful. The floor has been carefully swept. Children learn to distinguish shapes from old boxes of different sizes. The walls are decorated with collages made of pictures from newspapers and magazines. It is woefully inadequate, and, at the same time, heroic in a way that is heartbreaking.

“When the new classroom block is built,” the headmistress says, “then this can be a library again.

“But we have no books,” she adds as an afterthought. “You see why we need help?”

To understand what has gone wrong at schools like Chembira requires an understanding of what it used to do well. What Zimbabwe did particularly well in the first twenty years of its life was to correct the racial injustice that had denied quality universal education to the majority of the country’s black children: throughout the history of the colony, state education was bottlenecked to ensure that fewer and fewer blacks had access to education as they progressed up to tertiary education.

Government schools for whites, and to a lesser extent, those for Coloreds and Indians, had the best resources, while the “Africans only” schools, the Group B schools like Chembira, suffered from overcrowding, inadequately trained teachers and no resources. It is no wonder that at independence, the government, and its first leader, Mugabe, a teacher, considered it the chief priority, even ahead of land reform, to respond to the thirst for education. But in the last ten short years of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis, these hard won gains have been all but lost.

Chishawasha is a short drive from central Harare. It would be shorter still if the dust road from the turn off at Enterprise Road were tarred. We crawl along the dust road. The surrounding Shawasha Hills have become a fashionable new development, dotted with new houses built with new money. The valley itself remains resolutely rural: Innocent stops the car to let two small boys herd their cows along the road.

Chishawasha is Catholic Central, with four schools, a clinic, the regional seminary and a cathedral all built on land that Rhodesia’s founder, Cecil John Rhodes, gave to the Jesuits in 1890s. It is prime land. The school overlooks the old Valley of the Millionaires—after the Federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland collapsed, its last Governor- General, Simon Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie, set up a farm here.

We drive to St Dominic’s Secondary school. Everything seems to be exactly the same. The redbrick classrooms. The convent with its Dominican sisters. The school hall were mass was held and where we sat exams. The statue of the Virgin in the grotto. There is Sister Elizabeth, with her gentle face and German accent, and there, Mr. Madubeko, the headmaster and my old science teacher. A highly selective girls’ school, St Dominic’s was every parent’s dream. It offered a first class education in an austere but nurturing Catholic environment, far from the temptations of town. Daughters of the wealthy mixed with girls from poor rural families, their common bond academic excellence.

“Is the school still committed to educating girls from all backgrounds?” I ask my former teachers.

“We really want to educate poor children but we can’t educate anyone without money, no?” says Sister Elizabeth

Mr. Madubeko confirms this but clarifies that even though only those able to pay fees come to the school, they aim to keep the fees low. The fees are currently less than 400 dollars a term. Sister Elizabeth explains that in years when they got donations from overseas, they could pay for girls who may have lost their parents and were unable to continue.

The more I look, the more I see changes. The library has moved to a room twice its former size. There is a new A-Level block, built in 2001, which offers accommodation for 40 girls. St Dominic’s has received an impressive number of Secretary’s Bells; at a hundred percent, the school consistently has the highest pass rate for A-Levels in the country.

“We do not take girls with less than 5 As at O-Level if they were here,” Sister Elizabeth says. “And if they come from outside the school, they have to have 8 As.” Mr. Madubeko bemoans the current pass-rate of 90 per cent at O-Level, the lowest it has been in ten years. “When I was at St Dominic’s,” I remark, feeling smug, “The pass-rate was 100 percent.”

Mr. Madubeko sighs and says that they are often under pressure to take girls who are not up to standard. One of the girls tells me later that one of Zimbabwe’s top army generals had a daughter here. An army truck drove up every Saturday to bring her food, even though this was against the school rules. Mr. Madubeko is circumspect about the kind of pressures he is under, saying only that these pressures prevent a perfect pass rate.

The same faces I crept past those many years ago, trying very hard not to attract any attention, are still here, among them Sister Elizabeth, Sister Veronica, the deputy headmaster and his wife, who teaches science, Mai Farai, the Librarian, and Mr. Madubeko himself who has been here since 1975.

For the Dominican nuns, it is clear: the convent, and so the school, is their home. “But the others, why do the other teachers stay so long?” I ask.

Mr. Mutangara, deputy head since 1987, laughs and says, “There is nowhere else to go.”

Mr. Madubeko explains it has been a stable home and a wonderful environment for his children who all grew up in the valley. It also helps, he says, that the staff receives a better salary than the ministry salary—it is topped up by money from fees. He becomes wistful as he wonders whether his staying so long has been good or bad for the school.

We move around the school taking photographs and find girls hard at work. A class in social geography is exploring the concept of equality under socialism. In the food and nutrition class, the girls are learning to make a curry. In this same room, my classmates and I were taught to make food meant for cold English winters, shepherd’s pie and toad-in-the-hole, Yorkshire pudding and apple crumble. At the end of the corridor is a literature room. There are five girls there now, with books before them, discussing Measure for Measure.

As we leave, I take a look at the school’s vision statement on the notice board. One of the aims of the school, according to this, is “preparation for life in all its dimensions, its profound meaning and transformation beyond death to eternal life.” There is no way of measuring whether the school achieves this. What it achieves without question are stellar results: twenty-three years after I left, St Dominic’s is clearly still one of the top schools in the country.

From St Dominic’s, I went to St Ignatius College as one of the 40 girls at Zimbabwe’s finest Jesuit school for boys. Our mission was partly to help the boys move with ease between the all-boys environment of Form 1 to 4 to the co-educational A-Levels. With us, they got used to girls before being unleashed on an unsuspecting world. But we were there mainly because Mary Ward, a forward-thinking English nun who founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now called the Congregation of Jesus, dreamed of setting up girls’ schools on the Jesuit model. The Mary Ward girls, as we were called, shared classes with the boys.

We received a first class education.

Since its establishment on 1962, St Ignatius has educated generations of brilliant boys from poor and modest backgrounds: better-off families in search of a Jesuit education tend to send their sons to St. Ignatius’ posher brother school in town, St. George’s College.

When I visit St Ignatius with Rudo and Innocent, it is like stepping into the achingly familiar. I was very happy here. The school is built on a hill, with the Chishawasha valley on one side and a view of the Valley of the Millionaires from Mary Ward House. Rich red earth is everywhere, at one with the red bricks of the well-maintained buildings. Father Roland von Nidda, the rector, is expansive in his welcome. He takes us from classroom to classroom. My visit inspires him to invite me to the Prize-Giving Day as a guest of honor.

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, likes to say that the real scope of the tragedy of Mugabe’s most recent years in power is that he has destroyed not only what he inherited at independence, but also what he built himself.

It is here that I see my old school at its very best.

I speak to the boys and girls about what the school meant to me, about the Jesuits priests and Mary Ward sisters who taught me, about the fierce ambition they burned in me to not only do exceptionally well but also, in the words of St Ignatius of Loyola, to find a way to set the world on fire. I tell them about my little rebellions, abandoning Catholicism for Buddhism, only to find myself as lonely as my headmaster Father Berridge had predicted: I would probably be the only Buddhist in Zimbabwe, he had said.

“I also want to be a Buddhist,” whispers a small Form 2 boy to me later, as I give out his prize.

Father Von Nidda emphasizes in his speech that the school aims for a holistic education. Over tea, he tells me that he wants to send into the world compassionate young men and women with critical minds. “And they are so bright,” he says. “My goodness they are bright. I do worry though that some of them take religion too seriously.”

The prizes follow. The sun hits my eyes as I give out certificate after certificate, for best A-Level results, for the top ten in each class. There are school colors in volleyball, swimming, netball, rugby, soccer, basketball and chess. It is inspiring to see both the fierce competition and the pleasure in the pursuit of excellence. There is humor and camaraderie in the competitiveness. Peels of ululation ring out as exultant parents dance little jigs to celebrate their children. The teachers are just as competitive. They receive prizes for every record they break.

As I hand out their certificates and congratulate the A-level students who did exceptionally well in both the Cambridge and Zimbabwe school examinations, I ask where they are headed, and what they will read.

“I will do medicine in South Africa,” says one.

“I am off to York University in Canada,” says another.

They want to study medicine and accountancy, law and engineering, architecture and actuarial science.

“If I can’t go anywhere else,” the former head girl, Nancy Kachingwe, tells me, “Then it will have to be the University of Zimbabwe.’

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, likes to say that the real scope of the tragedy of Mugabe’s most recent years in power is that he has destroyed not only what he inherited at independence, but also what he built himself. My journey around my childhood confirms that, far from being an enabler and builder, the government has actually been an inhibitor and destroyer. The successful schools are those where government interference is felt the least, private schools that, untainted by government control, have managed to thrive.

Even in the government schools, though, all is not quite lost. Individuals have managed to make a difference, even against the odds; ordinary people like the headmaster and teachers at Kundai; the engaged parents in the SDA at Chembira. Even Alfred Beit, which fell the furthest of my previous schools, has barely hung on because parents have agreed to pay more fees than government demands.

It is hard to shake the sense I got that money has replaced race in Zimbabwe. In Rhodesia, race determined whether a child was guaranteed a good education. In post-crisis Zimbabwe, it is now class that is the determinant. It is the ability of the parents to pay that determines whether their children get a good education. A Zimbabwean PhD student has written a thesis that argues that this generation of children will be less literate then their parents, a terrifying possibility that brings with it the specter of social upheavals to come.

In one respect, the Zimbabwe of my education is the same Zimbabwe today. It is a country filled with children who manage to find happiness in difficult circumstances, who make toys out of bricks, who study in the light of candles, and who are filled with imaginations and ambitions that are bigger than the collapse of their failed state.

Bulawayo 24News

By Mathula Lusinga

16 January 2012

Why do Zimbabweans bark up the wrong trees leaving the real culprits splashing the diamonds money like there is no tomorrow?

When schools opened for the first term of 2012, teachers went on strike in demand of a better wage which is currently pegged at US$300, asking for more than US$500. The Minister of Education, David Coltart told us that it is beyond his power to increase the salaries. We then had the story of how the Minister of Public Service, Lucia Matibenga, was reduced to tears as she tried to explain why teachers cannot get the increase they are asking for.

Contrast this with the details of two high profile weddings held in Harare on the same evening before Christmas – an illustration that corruption and greed have reached alarming levels. Zanu PF ministers have plundered the country’s resources to fund their lavish lifestyles as money, drugs and sex mark the new lifestyle of the upcoming Harare elite, who are all connected or related one way or another. While civil servants suffer in poverty, Sydney Sekeramayi (Minister of State Security) and Emmerson Mnangagwa (Minister of Defence) held top-of-the-range weddings for their daughter and son respectively.

At Sekeramayi’s daughter wedding, 3,000 guests sat under a large marquee, and were wined and dined with the most expensive tastes in food and drink, all paid for by the Minister. Their exotic six course meal was prepared by specially hired chefs including some flown in for the occasion. To enhance the spirit of the wedding, five bands were paid to perform on five separate dance floors.

The wedding for Emmerson Mnangagwa’s eldest son competed for extravagance. Each table was apparently given six bottles of Johnny Walker Blue Label – a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label King George V Edition – 2007 costs US$550! French Champagne flowed throughout the evening and, among other expensive dishes, seafood was flown in from Mozambique and RSA. Wow – I thought our locally brewed Chibuku and some pap and stew would be enough to excite people.  Of course there were expensive wedding gifts from all guests. Mnangagwa himself allegedly gave his son a new five-bedroom house in the most expensive part of Harare plus US$120,000 to furnish it. That is a TV in each room and a flat screen for the cows!

Go to hell teachers, they don’t give a damn about you!

So it’s obvious that teachers can go to hell with their demands for a living wage because money from diamonds never reaches the state coffers. To make matters worse Zimbabwean legislators seem not to be interested in making noise about it as they are busy focusing on other issues that avoid pissing off Zanu PF chefs. Most critical politicians are in the papers daily for the wrong reasons, with matters of their sexual preference taking over their daily lives. In turn fewer and fewer MPs are demanding accountability over diamond revenues, giving Zanu PF an opportunity to continue with their evil deeds with no one asking questions. There are many youth initiatives that are refused very small amounts of funding while Zanu PF children are spending millions in drugs and furnishing their lavish lifestyles. The battle between right and wrong is fast becoming one that needs redefinition because the stories above simply tell us of a country with no moral responsibility.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness – Martin Luther King, Jr.

allAfrica.com

By Brooks Marmon

15 January 2012

The recent ascension of Guy Scott to the vice-presidency of Zambia has been viewed with great interest by the country’s neighbors as well as Western media.

Dr. Scott was born in what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1944 to settler parents and recent pieces for the BBC and The Guardian have suggested that his appointment is a significant milestone for the development of a post-colonial non-racial order in Africa. Soon after assuming Zambia’s second highest office, Scott announced that his election reflected a process of “Caribbeanization” in Zambia.

The racial antics of Julius Malema (the former youth leader of South Africa’s governing party) aside, the African nation that is most in dire need of ‘Carribeanization’ is undoubtedly Zimbabwe (both Namibia and Kenya have European settler populations that are remnants of the colonial era but they are relatively stable and not particularly active politically). Unsurprisingly, both the independent and state press in Zimbabwe have devoted space to Scott’s appointment. The installation of a white in Zambia’s second highest position begs two significant questions: (1) will there be a shift in Zambia’s Zimbabwe policy and (2) will it have any consequences for European participation in Zimbabwe’s political process?

Attempts to answer the first question are marred by mixed signals while the second can only be answered at this stage through conjecture. However, the favorable treatment of Scott by Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party does provide for some interesting historical observations that allow one to better understand how Zimbabwe devolved from what was supposedly a model of racial conciliation in the 1980s (although perhaps only in comparison to a South Africa still dominated by Apartheid) to a society that subjects a visitor who has accidentally stepped on a passenger’s shoe in a highly crowded bus to a ten minute tirade about Bush and Blair – and the need for the white proprietor of the offending foot to make financial reparations (this was one isolated experience of the author with one individual on one of several visits to the country).

Outside observers might expect Guy Scott, 20 years old when Northern Rhodesia became an independent Zambia and almost 36 when (Southern) Rhodesia became an independent Zimbabwe, to have an overtly hostile position to Mugabe’s indigenization and black empowerment policies. Those suspicions might be fuelled by knowledge that Scott was born in Livingstone, which due to geography (Zimbabwe is just across the river and Namibia, then a South African protectorate, is also very close) was one of colonial Zambia’s more conservative towns. Scott is also a 1962 graduate of Peterhouse, then an all-white Southern Rhodesia boarding school, located in Marondera, a major conservative farming center.

However, Scott’s father, a newspaper owner who immigrated to Northern Rhodesia in 1927, was a liberal independent Member of Parliament representing Lusaka from 1953-1958; the son has long advocated similar political views. As a young student in Southern Rhodesia, Guy Scott supported the nationalist, black dominated National Democratic Party. At a meeting of the Common Market for Southern and Eastern Africa (COMESA) in Malawi in October, Scott represented Zambia’s new President, Michael Sata, at a summit for heads of state. Zimbabwe was represented at the highest level and President Mugabe and Vice-President Scott lavished praise on each other.

The exchange resulted in a piece in the Herald, the rigidly controlled Zimbabwe state newspaper, entitled “Nothing Odd with Zambia’s White VP”. The article decried “sections of the right wing media” that claim Scott’s appointment “was likely to estrange Lusaka from Harare.” Weeks later, an independent Zimbabwean newspaper (perhaps one of the aforementioned right wing media outlets) ran a piece examining the unlikely alliance between Mugabe and Scott. The bulk of the piece focused on Scott’s push for Zimbabwe’s readmission to The Commonwealth of Nations at a meeting of the group in Australia. In an apparent rebuke to Zambia, ZANU-PF immediately took to the state airwaves, stating that the party had no interest in rejoining the body.

Further signs of a bump in the relationship between the executive offices of each country emerged around the alleged decision of President Sata not to attend ZANU-PF’s recently concluded annual congress. Also of note, only days after a South African fast food chain with numerous branches in Zimbabwe (and Zambia) pulled an advert poking fun of Mugabe as a lonely dictator with no dinner companions, President Sata joked about Mugabe’s extensive security detail following their first official state meeting.

While Zimbabwe’s relations with Zambia do not seem to have been significantly strained with the rise of Scott and Sata, it is interesting to note that Sata, who campaigned on an overtly populist platform, has not expressed a greater level of solidarity with ZANU-PF’s indigenization program. This signals that despite western fears, a radical indigenization policy is not likely to gain traction in countries like Namibia and South Africa where whites maintain significant economic interests. More importantly, it indicates the limits of Mugabe’s populist approach in maintaining the support of his SADC neighbors who forced him into a power sharing government in 2009.

Guy Scott’s appointment as Vice-President might also be expected to influence Zimbabwe by moving the country’s electorate toward increased non-racial voting considerations. However, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the junior partner in Zimbabwe’s coalition government, has, given the overall political environment, been able to elect and appoint (the country’s ambassador to Senegal is an American born white) Europeans with relative ease. The party’s two factions have several white MP’s, the Education Minister, David Coltart being the most prominent. Zimbabwean whites have also been successful at the municipal level, with the major towns of Mutare and Kariba both administered by white mayors in recent years.

What Mugabe’s kind words for Scott do seem to reveal is that ZANU-PF’s displeasure with the results of the white roll elections of 1985 (a concession wrangled by the outgoing minority government before independence in 1980) may have rendered any attempts at racial reconciliation moribund. In that election, 15 of the 20 seats reserved for whites went to the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe, led by Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia who vowed not to relinquish minority rule for 1,000 years. It has been alleged that these results infuriated Mugabe (setting the stage for fast track land reform 15 years later). His effusive appreciation of Scott’s historical pedigree certainly grants credence to the idea that the constitutional provision allowing Ian Smith and other former officials of the minority government to serve in the Zimbabwean parliament for almost a decade after independence had grave consequences.

It is quite telling to note that Mugabe and ZANU-PF have been vehement in their refusal to swear in Roy Bennett, a controversial but popular former Rhodesian policeman tapped by the MDC to be the Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the Government of National Unity. Conversely, Guy Scott was named Zambia’s Minister of Agriculture with little fuss in 1991 (less than five years after Ian Smith left Zimbabwe’s Parliament) following Zambia’s first transfer of political power. Unlike Scott in Zambia, Bennett is fluent in the major indigenous language of Zimbabwe, Shona, and does not have a doctoral degree from Europe. Also unlike Scott, Bennett’s career in politics has been marked by brawls in Parliament and almost a year in jail. Bennett’s arrest on the eve of the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity and his current exile indicates that despite Scott’s belief that racism doesn’t “have much mileage in Zimbabwe”, the country has a long way to go to aspire to Rainbow Nation status.

Contrary to popular expectations, it appears that the appointment of a white as Zambia’s Vice-President will have little impact on the country’s relations with Zimbabwe (rather the key factor appears to be the extent to which President Sata departs from his populist campaign platform). It is also unlikely, as Fergal Keane of the BBC and others suggest, that the rise of Guy Scott represents a definitive post-colonial ‘brighter future for white Africans.’ Each nation of southern Africa bears the unique scars of its own colonial heritage. Zimbabwe, which saw its unrepentant white rulers maintain a constitutionally mandated voice in its affairs for a decade after independence (and had no Truth and Reconciliation Commission), carries the weight of its own burden. For Zimbabwe to experience an effective ‘Caribbeanization’, its current generation of white leaders will have to blaze a trail that they did not attempt to traverse until the advent of a mainstream political opposition in 1999.

• Great u tube on Ngoni Makusha – Zimbabwe's star athlete http://t.co/7pROtkwl #
• Met William Hague and Prince Andrew last night at Lancaster House reception and discussed need for UK to assist Zim's GPA, flawed as it is #
• Attending #Apple summit for education in London – fascinating educational apps – some schools have a iPad per child – much work to be done #
• India 161 all out today against substantially the same Australian attack that Zimbabwe A did so well against when Aus A toured in winter #
• Warner hits a 100 in 69 balls off against India – of course he too played for Australia A against Zimbabwe A during the winter of 2011 #
• Aus thrash India. But it was Aus A members who played against Zim A who did all damage- Warner 180, Hilf, Sidd & Starc got 18 of 20 wickets! #

NewsDay

12 January 2012

A Bulawayo man yesterday filed a High Court application seeking an order barring Masiyephambili Junior School from stopping his dreadlocked son from attending Grade 0 classes.

Khumbulani Dube who is representing his four-year -old son, Mbalenhle Dube, filed an urgent chamber application yesterday afternoon after the headmaster of the school denied his son access to classes because he was wearing dreadlocks.

Education minister, David Coltart, Masiyephambili Junior School and the school’s headmaster are respondents.

Dube, through Lizwe Jamela of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, argued his family practices Rastafarian religion and keeping long hair was a manifestation of their religious beliefs.

“I raised this issue before school opening with the administration staff and they were reluctant to deal with the matter and advised me that I should rather have a word with 3rd respondent (headmaster) on the opening day.

“I believe my son’s long hair is not indiscipline or disobedience to the school as it is not related to his conduct,” he said.

Dube said he took his son to school on Tuesday and the headmaster advised him in no uncertain terms that his son was not going to be allowed in class if his hair was not cut.

“My son was in fact barred from joining his classmates and I was directed to leave with my son and comply with the said school rule if I still considered my son a student at the school.

“My religious pleas were not entertained at all and eventually I left the school dejected with my son while his counterparts were in class enjoying their right to education.”

Dube said his matter was an urgent one as his son had already lost two days of the school term and continued to suffer irreparable harm as he was not allowed into the school.

Speech given at the Education World Forum, London

By David Coltart

11 January 2012 

Introduction

Zimbabwe was recognised in the past as having arguably the best education system in Africa. A sound curriculum for black Zimbabweans was developed in the 1950s prior to the destructive Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) period. The post-independence period from 1980 saw rapid expansion. Literacy rates were the highest in Africa. Indeed, in 2012 the UNDP held that they were still the highest, although their figures were based on questionable access and attendance criteria.

In the last two decades, however, funding in real terms has dropped precipitously. This situation has been compounded by political trauma in the last decade, including hyper-inflation and the targeting of teachers who were perceived as being political. The result was that 20,000 teachers left the profession in 2007 and 2008.

February 2009

When I came to office in February 2009 the education system was in crisis. Eight thousand schools were closed and 90,000 teachers were on strike. Public exams had not been marked, textbook to pupil ratios had fallen to an average of 1:15, physical infrastructure was collapsing. The destruction of the Zimbabwe Dollar meant there was no money available. Donors were sceptical about the political process. There were no functioning Education Management and Information Systems (EMIS), no internet and no accurate data since 2006.

Obviously very few countries get into this state, and to that extent this example may not be very relevant save for being a reminder of the necessity not to get a country into this state. But what have we done since February 2009?

Stabilisation

As a Government we agreed that all civil servants would start on the same salary of US$ 100 per month. That included me as Minister! We then had to enter into dialogue with the Trade Unions to bring an end to endemic strikes. We offered an amnesty to teachers who had left the profession during the difficult period, allowing them to return to work. We started an extensive consultation process, involving unions, parents, children and NGOs regarding what was needed to stabilise and resuscitate the sector. In July 2010 I launched a short-term strategic plan, which has now been developed into a five year plan.

The key elements of the five year plan are as follows.

Firstly, to restore the professional status of teachers. We have in the last 3 years increased teachers’ salaries from US$100 to $300 at entry level. In March 2009 I launched a new National Educational Advisory board to advise on matters pertaining to the improvement of primary and secondary education in Zimbabwe, and we have plans to establish a Professional Teacher Council to administer the welfare of the teachers and improve their professional conduct. We have asked for the introduction of a rural allowance to encourage good teachers to work in the rural areas.

The wider benefits of our efforts to restore the professional status of teachers can already be seen reflected in the 2011 school results. These indicate a stabilisation of the sector owing to minimal disruption from strikes.

Secondly, to improve conditions in the classroom. There has been a major problem of lack of materials, especially textbooks. The Education Transition Fund was set up in September 2009 as a means of channelling donor money to address these issues. The ETF is chaired by me but managed by UNICEF, with membership restricted to donor countries. The results have been encouraging; in 2011 15 million textbooks were delivered to primary schools restoring the pupil to textbook ratio to 1:1 in core subjects. Secondary schools are set to receive 8 million textbooks this year, which will also result in a pupil to textbook ratio of 1:1 in core subjects.

The impact of the primary textbook programme can already be seen in the 2011 Grade 7 results. These had plummeted in recent years but have now been stabilised and in 2011 started to improve.

Thirdly, we need to improve the quality of education. This will involve an extensive curriculum review, something that has not taken place in Zimbabwe since 1986. An extensive and exhaustive process is underway to bring the curriculum up to date and we are looking at introducing Civic Education, where students will learn about issues of democracy and human rights. Furthermore, we need to move from a heavily academic curriculum to one which includes more vocational education. We are working on a plan to use podcast technology, which I hope will enable us to leap frog years of a dearth of computers in schools.

Investments in the Examination Authority are also necessary in order to improve the quality of education. We have plans to introduce a new computer marking system that will make our examination system financially viable

Fourthly, governance issues need to be addressed. With the breakdown of systems lawlessness has crept in. New regulations are in the process of being introduced with a focus on the rights of children, incorporating international covenants. We are also seizing the opportunity to grant increased autonomy to parents with a deliberate policy to encourage them to take a more active role.

Finally, we plan to place a greater focus on marginalised children. Zimbabwe has some very good independent and mission schools and we have granted them more autonomy. Our focus is on Government and local council schools but thee is a vast gulf between these two broad sets of schools. I have been concerned that our talented disadvantaged children are not being adequately served by the government education system. To address this, we are in the process of establishing Academies, also known as Centres of Excellence. These will be rehabilitated Government schools which will be bound to reserve 40 per cent of their intake for talented disadvantaged children, who will receive full scholarships. In this manner I hope to reduce the gulf between government and private schools.

Overall results

The overall results can already be seen. The schools are now open and student to textbook ratios are now acceptable. But we still face enormous problems. The Ministry is operating on a shoestring budget. Our budget last year was US$ 14.8 million, which works out at less than US$5 per child per annum. Were it not for the passion of children, parents and teachers the system would have collapsed.

We remain in crisis. The ETF has worked but is woefully inadequate. The main responsibility for this of course lies with the Zimbabwe Government. We need to move from rhetoric to action and make education a priority. However, we also need the international community to assist. Under the direction of Carol Bellamy, the Global Partnership for Education has been granted US$2 billion to support the education systems of 46 countries worldwide. If one compares this to the billions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, or on the retention of nuclear weapons, however, one sees a misguided order of priorities in the international community.

The best way to promote world peace is through educating the world’s poor; through giving them hope. There is a need for a radical review of the developed world’s funding priorities if we are to make significant improvements to the world’s education systems.

The Herald

10 January 2012

Over the past 30 years the relationship between parents and the schools their children attend has undergone a long overdue revolution.

Parents are no longer, and must be no longer, passive payers of fees and limit their involvement to dropping their children off and picking them up.

Soon after independence, with the incredible growth of the school system following the needed political decision that all children should be given the opportunity to attend school for at least 11 years, it soon became obvious that even with the accompanying huge surge in the budget, the education ministry did not have nearly enough money.

So steps were taken to involve parents. School development associations were formed and State schools were permitted to charge levies over and above the fees. As the then minister said, the ministry would provide teachers and chalk and parents would pay for the rest.

The little left over in the budget after salaries would largely be allocated to rural schools where money was very scarce.

Steps were taken to ensure that parents had to be involved. One revolution was the legal right of parents to see the SDA accounts and the requirement that they had to approve, at a special meeting, any changes in levy with the ministry having the final word.

For two decades the system worked fairly well. The ministry rarely intervened so long as a substantial majority of parents agreed to the levies, or to the labour levies that many rural schools introduced to build new classrooms.

The inflation years caused concern, but after some ups and downs and legal battles it became clear that so long as parents agreed to levies they could raise them.

With the switch to hard currencies many SDAs went a step further and used levy money to supplement teachers’ salaries to ensure that qualified people would remain in the profession and that they would be able to concentrate on teaching, rather than their own businesses.

Unfortunately this extra set of responsibilities for parents has caused some problems.

In some schools powerful committees of the SDAs, and even some heads, have forgotten that all parents have to be involved in the budgeting and the setting of levies, and just make decisions without going through the process required.

At some of these schools, and at others, the parents have overdone it, taking their financial responsibilities to mean that they can have a say in how the school is run.

The present minister, Sen David Coltart, has now fired a warning shot. He has made it clear that the laid-down procedures for setting fees and levies must be followed. Parents decide, after going through the costs of what facilities they want their children to have, just what the fee or levy is.

Minister Coltart, before becoming minister, was heavily involved in private education and has always argued that what parents agree to pay they should be allowed to pay.

But he clearly wants to see that agreement, and in State schools his officials obviously have to ensure that a substantial majority in a particular zone can find the money.

The other requirement is that parents do not run schools. Heads run them. This is right. Education is not something that amateurs should be making decisions about; it needs professionals.

Again the minister knows this from his earlier days; in the non-government systems boards of governors have a lot of say over money, but so far as education and administration go have to limit themselves to hiring a competent head, or for that matter firing one that does not measure up.

Even at the minister’s level, the Education Act makes it clear that the Permanent Secretary makes the professional decisions, such as what the core curriculum consists of and, through his professional assistants, who shall run which school.

The minister has more say over money and general policy, but not on what happens in a classroom. So we see the need for ensuring that the system and the laws that make it work are kept in front of all.

This is presumably why the minister is planning new regulations, not to change the system but to make sure that it works properly.

We need to keep parents involved, otherwise the system will collapse.

But parents also need to understand that while they have quite a lot to say over the finances raised through levies and how they are spent, the professionals cannot be interfered with when it comes to who teaches and what is taught.

Obviously parents, or even an SDA, who are unhappy about how a school is run can complain, to the governors at a non-government school and the regional director at a government school, and equally obviously a responsible authority will investigate and take action if the complaints are justified.

But there is a clear division of responsibility and parents have to accept this, just as school authorities have to accept that parents are now entitled to be involved in the budget process and a majority agree to what is proposed before fees and levies are set.

VOA

By Gibbs Dube

10 January 2012

Members of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe in Harare launched a sit-down labor action Tuesday on the first day of the new school term to enforce their demand for pay increases of more than 100 percent for the lowest paid instructors.

A VOA correspondent who visited primary and secondary schools in the capital reported that most teachers were not conducting lessons on the first day of 2012’s first term.

But some headmasters at schools in Bulawayo, in Matabeleland North, and Gweru, in Midlands province, said teachers were conducting lessons as usual.

The Progressive Teachers Union is demanding a salary of US$540 a month for junior teachers who are now receiving just US$253 monthly.

PTUZ Vice President Nokuthala Hlabangana said her union called the strike in spite of a meeting that has been set for Wednesday between government negotiators and representatives of civil servants.

Hlabangana said her members will continue on strike until salaries rise. “The government has no choice at all because we need better salaries,” she said.

Sifiso Ndlovu, chief executive of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association, said his members have ignored the PTUZ call for a sit-down strike.

Neither Education Minister David Coltart nor Labor Minister Lucia Matibenga could be reached immediately for comment.

Elsewhere in Harare, more than 700 students of the Cold Comfort Primary School in the suburb of Warren Park were barred from entering the school by its putative new owners, leading to a protest by pupils and parents at the Ministry of Education.

Ownership of the school, which has a historical association with the liberation movement that led to the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980, has been contested since the Herentals private educational group announced its purchase of the school in 2011.

A group called Release Power was the main contestant to Herentals’ title.