Sunday News

By Vusumuzi Dube

9 October 2011

A cellphone is a gadget that was originally designed to make communication easier and more efficient but like all inventions made for the good of mankind, it can be abused.

In recent media reports, school children have been reported to be largely taking advantage of this gadget not only to do research, which is good, but also to record pornographic or abusive material that they go on to distribute among themselves.

A recent case of the nude pictures of students from Ihlathi High School made the headlines of our sister paper, B-Metro.

There was also a video of Milton High School students seemingly bullying a fellow student, not to mention the very recent video of teenagers from two of Bulawayo’s “elite” schools engaging in sexual intercourse.

All these vices capture a generation that has become more reliant on the cellphone for their day-to-day operation, this ranging from simple communication, to research right up to entertainment.

Gone are the days when a mobile phone used to be a symbol of wealth and prosperity, when children were the last people expected to have the gadget.

Nowadays it has become a common feature among every child, with almost everyone possessing the once hard-to-get gadget; at school it has now become a common to see school children competing with their teachers in terms of who possesses the best phone.

School children have now been introduced to the famed search engines such as wikipedia.com and google.com, to an extent that even during lessons you find them “googling” their assignments.

However, parents and educationalists have raised concern over the issue of children being allowed to have their mobile phones during lessons, with the main bone of contention being the fact that these children end up abusing the facility by viewing x-rated sites while in some cases they are said to be using the gadget right in the middle of lessons this thereby inhibiting the learning process.

However, as this argument lingers on the question is who really is to blame; the parents who purchase the cellphones for their children, the educationists who allow children to have these during learning hours or the children themselves who abuse a gadget that is meant for their own good.

Now, in this rapidly expanding market, some major networks are about to adopt a range of “kiddie phones” designed for children as young as four, with claims that its handsets are safer and smarter. But does this worsen or improve the education system?

On top of all this are the health effects of the cellphone. According to Britain’s newspaper, The Sunday Times, a study by researchers at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden last year indicated that children may be five times more likely to get brain cancer if they use mobile phones.

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, a leading Australian psychologist, described parents who allow young children to use mobile phones as “insane”.

Dr Carr-Gregg, a University of Melbourne professor of paediatrics, is worried about the power of mobile phones to distract and overexcite.

According to a survey conducted by Dr Carr-Gregg, 40 percent of children with mobile phones are sleep deprived on school nights, as peer pressure has made it normal for children of 6 and 7 to stay up until the early hours texting friends.

His evidence, revealed in a series of Australian academic seminars, suggests that millions of children are allowed mobile phones in their bedrooms, creating a generation of overtired “zombies”.

Other new research has linked deprivation in children with hyperactivity symptoms and hormone imbalances that increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.

However despite all this hype on the effects of a child’s learning implications, cellphone companies have used children and teens as a huge demographic for mobile phone makers and providers.

Mobile phones have become accessories that rival the status of designer clothing.

With each year, the pressure increases for parents to meet their teen’s demands, but at the end of the day the priority of cellphone makers and providers is to cash in on a huge market.

Although they are highly useful and increase one’s efficiency at work, the many demerits of the cellular phone are now taking the limelight.

The hot topic of the day is the use of these cellphones in educational institutions. Many educators find it a nuisance to find students in their classroom possessing mobile phones. Educational institutions also have started prohibiting the use of these phones within their campuses. However, as every coin has two sides, even cellphones have their own merits and demerits.

Contacted for comment, Education, Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Senator David Coltart said while there was no set policy inhibiting school children from bringing cellphones to school, school heads had the jurisdiction of banning them if they felt they were disturbing the learning process.

“Currently there is no policy nationally that says students should not bring their cellphones to school, it is however entirely up to the heads to decide if they can allow cellphones or not.

“They can also only intervene if there is a particular incident where students might be disturbing others in class and the cellphones can be taken only as a disciplinary measure,” said Minister Coltart.

The minister said what was key was that these mobile phones do not interfere with the learning curriculum of the student as this was the primary mandate of any education system.

“What we have to appreciate is that a cellphone is a communication device, but over and above everything we should be responsible enough by ensuring that they do not interfere with the primary goal of education,” he said.

Veteran educationist and Zanu-PF secretary for education, Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, said whole it was acceptable that we are living in a global village, it should be appreciated that allowing school children to freely use their mobile phones during lessons disturbed teachers from executing their mandate of teaching.

“As parents we should at least give our children the opportunity to learn thus these mobile phones should not be allowed within school premises as at the end of the day the children end up concentrating on playing with their phones rather than the learning process.

“While I fully agree that a cellphone helps in the basic communication process, our children are no longer using them for this function but use them for self-aggrandisement and other immoral activities which inhibit negatively on the whole education process,” said Dr Ndlovu.

He said that it was well known that communication technology also played a role in the developing of a child especially with the rising technological era.

“I am not saying deprive the children of the gadgets completely because whether we like it nor not they have a huge impact on the growth of the child, we don’t want to produce a generation that is technophobic considering that nowadays you find a five year old freely using the computer or anf of these technological gadgets.

“What I am simply saying is that let’s not interfere with teaching curriculum because we end up depriving our children of a fundamental right, this being of education,” said Dr Ndlovu.

Former vice chancellor of the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Professor Phinias Makhurane echoed Dr Ndlovu’s sentiments, saying while it was appreciable that times were fast changing this was not to be used as an excuse to cripple the education system.

“It is a common rule that cellphones must be switched off during lessons so that the teacher is not disturbed, school heads must play a lead role in this aspect.

“Yes, it is good to have cellphones in terms of communication, but they should not disturb the whole education system,” sad Prof Makhurane.

He said it had to be appreciated that at the end of the day mobile phones had their advantages like they gave students the opportunity to research their assignments and further improve their knowledge base.

So as the argument lingers on who’s to blame on these mobile phones finding their way into the classroom, one thing for certain is that after noting the importance of these communication devices the students themselves should be responsible and ensure that they don’t abuse them and use them during lessons, which goes on to affect the education process.

• Magnificent rain – purple skies to match the Jacarandas – Zimbabwe at its finest – hopefully this will now stop the bushfires #
• There is nothing quite like a Zimbabwean thunderstorm at night – stunning lightening and the freshest air the world can offer – spectacular! #
• Tutu consistently gets it right: on apartheid, on Zimbabwe, on the need for principle to trump trade relations as shown re Dalai Lama's visa #
• Having just enjoyed the Zim v Zim coaches battle in the England/India cricket we await the Zim Beast v Zim Pocock battle in Rugby world cup #
• Coldplay in Southern Africa; great that Chris Martin is just over the Limpopo from his roots; hoping for the day when they play in Zimbabwe #
• Zambia's white vice-president hails 'cosmopolitan' new era http://t.co/AtSPdHqG via @guardian #
• Grave containing up to 60 people found at Zimbabwe school http://t.co/NsIdFMbk via @guardian #
• Coltart intervenes in Anglican saga http://t.co/dHk7TucJ #
• Children Still Affected by Zimbabwe's 2005 Eviction Campaign – Amnesty Intn'l http://t.co/Mrjj6iX3 #
• RIP Steve Jobs – the world was changed by his brilliant simplicity #

The Standard

By Navanji Madanhire

9 October 2011

I got the missive below from Marshall Ngwenya a reader from Bulawayo:

Thanks for your piece on litter. I stay in Bulawayo and it’s not any different. I see very beautiful smartly-dressed ladies throwing used tissue-paper on the pavement and they just spoil their outlook. I hope we can change this as a nation.

He was referring to my column last week in which I bemoaned the littering in our cities and on our highways. This little letter from Bulawayo shows that littering is indeed a national problem. But what is heartening is that people who wrote to me and those I socialise with have said they are very willing to make a difference.

Hazel Magumise a senior officer in the Ministry of Trade and Commerce called and urged a national crusade to keep our country clean. Last Sunday morning as I was driving to the shops, the motorist just in front of me threw an empty beer can onto the road. Guess what? I trailed him until he reached his destination.

He was a lovely gentleman and we had a chat. Afterwards he said he realised the foolishness of his habit and would stop it with immediate effect. He would also talk about it with any motorist he saw throwing litter out their window.

But my most heartening experience was the immediate behaviour change by patrons at my local. Whenever they need to smoke they leave the bar; so the bar is now a non-smoking haven. But there is another little problem with this; they are still dropping their stubs on the paths and the lawn. I will kindly ask the proprietors to provide ashtrays and little bins outside the bar.

The other day while driving in town I saw three ladies dressed in immaculate red dresses; they wore gumboots and elbow long gloves. They were cleaning the streets. Obviously, they were too few to cope but it was heart-warming to see that the city fathers are doing something about the litter.

But another thought struck me! What do litterbugs think about these women and men who clean our streets? Do they respect them? Do they see them as human beings who should pride themselves in their jobs? One thing was certain; litterbugs are contemptuous people who think some lesser humans should go around picking after them.

This I think is a remnant of our colonial mentality. During the colonial days street cleaners were contemptuously referred to as scavengers by their white bosses who had a false sense of superiority.

The term in itself used correctly is not scornful. Any dictionary will define scavenging as both a  carnivorous and herbivorous feeding behaviour in which individual scavengers search out dead animal and dead plant biomass on which to feed. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by contributing to the  decomposition of dead animal and plant material.

In Zimbabwe people ignorantly look down upon scavenging animals and birds such as dogs, hyenas, jackals, crows and vultures. The cleaning role they play to our ecosystem is all but forgotten. So during the colonial era when city cleaners were referred to as scavengers people associated them with these scorned animals and birds.

This is what bore the attitude that we can throw our litter and leftovers on the pavements because scavengers will come along and clean after us. It’s a wrong attitude. These women and men are honourable people and they deserve all our respect.

Their job is maintaining the cleanliness of our cities and towns. They work from the assumption that our cities are clean; all they have to do is to maintain the cleanliness. But litterbugs have reversed this thinking; they work from the warped premise that cities must be dirty so that they can be cleaned.

It will take a while to change this attitude because it seems to be ingrained in our collective national psyche. Two ministries must play a key role in banishing this attitude. The ministry responsible for the environment must come to the forefront and lead in the cleanliness crusade. But more importantly the Ministry of Education should see to it that we “catch them early” so to speak and design curricula that emphasise value of a clean environment targeted at children   from grade zero.

Now and again we see the Minister of Environment, Francis Nhema and officials from his ministry, dressed in new dustcoats joining groups that clean our cities for their own selfish marketing purposes. His efforts to lend credibility to these self-serving groups and to himself do not mean a thing if there isn’t a sustainable, practicable national policy on cleaning the environment.

Without education these half-hearted attempts by the minister to convey a message on the environment come to nought. This is why we should see Nhema work closely with David Coltart at the Ministry of Education.

Zimbabwe has recently seen shadowy groups sprouting all over town and involving themselves in activities that disturb public peace. The most notorious of these is Mbare-based Chipangano. We also have youths who call themselves Upfumi Kuvadiki who advocate, through unsavoury means, youth economic empowerment.

Like Chipangano, they have become a law unto themselves. We also have belligerent war veterans associations, particularly the one led by Jabulani Sibanda which is rampaging across the countryside terrorising peace-loving civilians.

What if they transformed themselves into peaceful outfits that began by cleaning the areas in which they live? Mbare would be the cleanest suburb if the Chipangano thugs cleaned it with the same enthusiasm and gusto with which they beat up people.

When I checked the word scavenger on an online encyclopaedia I found the following fascinating:

“A Scavenger can also refer to someone who is a member of scavenger, a group of people who are trying to reduce the amount of waste that they produce by giving away their unwanted/redundant things to other people rather than disposing of them.

Most of them are within the UK but there are members from all over the world. Scavenger is just one of the many groups, that are springing up around the world, involved in the free gifting movement (gift economy).” We should see such groups mushrooming in Zimbabwe; the best place to begin would be in the streets in which we live.

The Herald

By Felex Share

7 October 2011

Government has finished printing eight million textbooks worth US$10 million to be distributed to secondary schools next  month.

This will help Government achieve its target of one textbook per pupil for the six main subjects – Mathematics, English, Science, Geography, History and indigenous languages. Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart yesterday said the first consignment of the textbooks arrived from South Africa on Wednesday night.

The remainder is expected before monthend. About 6,5 million of the textbooks were printed outside Zimbabwe while local companies printed the remainder. Over 13 million primary school textbooks have already been distributed to schools countrywide under the Education Transition Fund.

This is a Government-initiated programme being co-ordinated by Unicef and the donor community. A total of 5 757 primary schools benefited from the fund created two years ago with the aim of mobilising resources for the education sector.

“We will be launching the programme for distribution on November 3 in Harare and the first consignment is already in the country, ready for distribution. The whole printing exercise has been completed.

“We are just waiting for the other consignment to be in the country and the respective schools will get their share. A large number of the books were printed in South Africa and others from other Sadc countries including us (Zimbabwe).”

The textbook to pupil ratio stands at 1:10 at most secondary schools while an estimated 15 percent of schools in rural areas have no textbooks at all. The Government’s target ratio is 1:1 by first term next year. Minister Coltart said the books would go a long way in improving the country’s education standards, especially in the rural areas.

“We have focused on printing books for six main subjects namely Mathematics, English, Science, Geography, History and the indigenous languages,” he said.  “Our country has achieved a lot in terms of education and these are the standards that we should strive to maintain. This is a huge step in the sector because it was disheartening to see more than 10 pupils reading a single textbook. Other rural schools do not have even a single textbook except probably those used by the teacher.

“Rural schools are the ones that are affected most when it comes to shortages and we are going to concentrate more on them.” Minister Coltart commended rural teachers for their commitment to educate pupils under deplorable conditions.

Most rural teachers do not get incentives from parents like their urban counterparts.

He said the Government secured more than US$52 million for the review and reform of the country’s curriculum, which was last done in the 1980s. “The country’s curriculum has not been updated in line with technological advancements,” said Minister Coltart.

Indepdendent

6 October 2011

How many readers have heard of the “Cuban Five”? It would be surprising if you haven’t because the state media in Zimbabwe has given them an inordinate amount of publicity.

The five were arrested in Miami in 1998 and charged with espionage. The five claim they were helpful to the US authorities. Whatever the case, they remain incarcerated in Miami.

According to the Cuban government: “In September 1998 five Cubans were arrested in Miami by FBI agents. Their mission in the US was to monitor activities of groups and organisations responsible for terrorist activities against Cuba.”

The Herald, which carried a sympathetic account of their ordeal last month, reminds us of Cuba’s contribution to Zimbabwe’s “revolutionary principles” and the assistance rendered at the time of Independence in the field of education and medicine.

We will not controvert any of this. Cuba has been generous in its assistance to Southern Africa over the years since the 1960s. But what strikes us as extraordinary is the way states like Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique have done nothing to express solidarity with journalists, writers and civic activists who have been incarcerated in Cuba and left to rot.

There was a brief episode when a handful of writers were released following Pope John Paul’s visit to the island, but the beneficiaries were obliged to seek exile in Spain.

Meanwhile, the Cuban Five’s supporters here complain bitterly that if the five are released they will have to remain in Miami.

The other dimension to this is that supporters of the Cuban Five have never bothered to tell us what they think of activists held in Zimbabwe’s jails. What about the MDC officials who were accused of involvement in killing Cain Nkala, who was suspected of kidnapping David Coltart’s election agent, Patrick Nabanyama.

President Mugabe went to Bulawayo and branded them terrorists. They were subsequently locked up for 21 months after Justice George Chiweshe reversed an order by Justice Lawrence Kamocha who had ruled that the accused could not be indicted for trial. They were, after a marathon trial, acquitted by Justice Sandra Mungwira in August 2004. Fletcher Dulini-Ncube lost the sight of an eye during his detention.

Surely the supporters of the Cuban Five have something to say about this lest the world thinks them hypocrites.

It was amusing to witness the turn of events in Zambia last week. Zanu PF was celebrating what they considered a great victory. This was a kick in the teeth for imperialism. Acres of forests were being chopped down to produce the pulp necessary to send the word that Michael Sata was a friend of Mugabe and an enemy of the MDC. Columnists like Reason Wafawarova were ecstatic.

“Closer home, Michael Sata of Zambia just won an election against the West’s favourite MMD and the win is an emphatic message that indeed imperialism is not invincible,” he crowed.

Life isn’t that simple. One of Sata’s first moves was to tell the Chinese they could do business in Zambia on the same terms as everybody else. They would not receive any favoured treatment from his government, he made clear. And let’s hope the appointment of veteran nationalist Guy Scott as VP sends a clear message to Zimbabwe’s delinquent nationalists that you don’t have to be a racist to be a good patriot!

SW Radio Africa

By Tererai Karimakwenda

6 October, 2011

The ex-communicated Anglican Bishop, Nolbert Kunonga, has struck another blow at the Church Province of Central Africa (CPCA), by serving eviction notices on all the teachers at St Mark’s in Mhondoro, where hundreds of students are due to take exams next week.

False Bishop, Nolbert Kunonga

Reverend Sydney Chirombe told SW Radio Africa that they have been given 48 hours to vacate the premises, or face the embarrassment of forced evictions. “We are in a dilemma right now and do not know where to put our belongings,” Reverend Chirombe said. About 900 students will be affected.

The eviction notices were delivered by a messenger for the deputy sheriff, Kadoma, and signed by Job Zabaya of Chikumbirike Associates. Chirombe said the reason given is that members of the CPCA should not teach in schools belonging to the Church Province of Zimbabwe (CPZ).

Kunonga split from the CPCA in 2007and formed the CPZ, but has failed to gain support from parishioners. He has used a controversial recent court ruling granting him custody of church properties to evict nurses, teachers and clergy from the CPCA, without considering the children and parishioners they serve. Kunonga also has support from Robert Mugabe and the police.

The renegade bishop is also allegedly planning to protest a visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who is due in Zimbabwe this weekend as part of his tour of Central Africa. He has requested a meeting with Robert Mugabe. Reports say the Archbishop plans to hold a service in the National Sports Stadium in Harare on Sunday, because Kunonga’s followers would not allow him to use the main Cathedral or other buildings.

The CPCA Harare Diocese is headed by Bishop Chad Gandiya, whose home was targetted by thugs last month in a robbery that was described as “suspicious”. The thieves got away with the family’s laptops and mobile phones.

Meanwhile Zimbabwe’s Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, David Coltart, told SW Radio Africa the evictions were disturbing but he could not intervene because no formal complaints had been received from the affected schools.

Minister Coltart confirmed that he had ordered a detailed investigation into the children and teachers who were evicted by Kunonga’s thugs from church buildings he seized in Murehwa district.

The Guardian 

By David Smith

5 October 2011

Remains thought to belong to victims of 1980s Gukurahundi massacre discovered after football pitch caves in.

A mass grave containing up to 60 victims of a massacre by President Robert Mugabe’s troops has reportedly been discovered by children playing football at a Zimbabwe school.

The pupils stumbled on human bones sticking out of the ground after their football pitch caved in during a game, according to New Zimbabwe.com. The remains are thought to belong to victims of the 1980s Gukurahundi massacre, in which an estimated 20,000 civilians were killed by Mugabe’s feared Fifth Brigade in the western Matabeleland province.

Moses Mzila Ndlovu, the minister for national healing, reconciliation and integration, reportedly visited the site at St Paul secondary school in Lupane last Friday.

He was quoted by New Zimbabwe.com as saying: “Villagers told me that St Paul and several other local schools were used as detention points by the Fifth Brigade. Dozens of people were detained, interrogated and executed before their bodies were dumped in mass graves dug up by the detainees.”

He added: “The grave is roughly 5×5 metres and locals told me there could be anything between 30 and 60 people buried there.”

School authorities have temporarily refilled the graves and the minister said he would be asking the cabinet to agree on a programme of reburials on a wider scale across Matabeleland and the Midlands.

The Gukurahundi massacre followed a bitter power struggle between Mugabe and his rival Joshua Nkomo. The Fifth Brigade, which received training in North Korea, was accused of indiscriminate killings and torture of Nkomo’s supporters while the world turned a blind eye. Gukurahundi – a Shona word for the spring rains that sweep away dry season chaff – remains an open wound of Mugabe’s 31-year rule.

David Coltart, Zimbabwe’s education minister, said: “It is inevitable that these types of revelations will occur as there are numerous mass graves throughout Matabeleland. It does underscore the need for a meaningful process of truth telling and reconciliation.”

Coltart warned against a repeat of an incident earlier this year when hundreds of skeletons were found in a remote mine shaft in Mount Darwin, 100 miles from Harare. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party claimed the dead were victims of white colonial-era soldiers and were accused of using state media to turn their fate into election propaganda.

“It is important that these discoveries are not politicised,” added Coltart, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change. “These are the remains of loved ones of people who still live in the areas the remains are found in. It is important that we do not repeat the shameful actions which occurred when remains were found in Mount Darwin.

“It is important that professional archaeologists and anthropologists are engaged in the process of the recovery and reburial of the remains. It is also important that the local community be involved to ensure that local customs, traditions and rites are complied with.”

The sentiment was echoed by Mzila Ndlovu, the local MDC MP, who told New Zimbabwe.com: “The local community must say where and how they want the reburials to occur. But first I would wish that the cabinet can reach an agreement on a national programme that can be put in place to deal with the specific crimes of the Fifth Brigade.”

But Ndlovu warned that it may be impossible to get Zanu-PF to permit a programme of mass exhumations and reburials. “We need to reach agreement to move forward. I want to say the attitude of Zanu-PF people is shocking. The attitudes are hostile, which shows a lack of willingness to deal with Gukurahundi.”

BBC

5 October 2011

Thousands of children in Zimbabwe, who were forcibly evicted from their homes six years ago, are still not receiving proper education, a rights group says.

The government had promised 700,000 families a better life when it demolished slums in major cities in 2005 under Operation Murambatsvina.

But Amnesty International says many children are now worse off, attending “makeshift” schools in new settlements.

Education Minister David Coltart said Amnesty’s report was “credible”.

Mr Coltart, a senior member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which formed a unity government with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party in 2009 to end years of conflict.

“These children were displaced [by the Zanu-PF government],” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

But he said the unity government had made “great strides” in tackling the education crisis.

Zimbabwe had one of the best education systems in Africa after independence in 1980, but it collapsed after 2000 when the country was hit by political conflict and hyperinflation, analysts say.

‘Sex work’

In its report Left behind: The impact of Zimbabwe’s mass forced evictions on the right to education, Amnesty said the government had taken a “step backward” when it launched Operation Murambatsvina, which means “clean out the filth” in the local Shona language.

It demolished shack settlements in Harare and other cities, before moving people to new areas under Operation Garikai (Better Life).

The government had removed children from areas where they had education and six years later it had failed to build schools in the new settlements, the report said.

This had forced communities to set up “make-shift” schools, striking a “devastating blow to the lives and dreams of thousands of children”.

“The new settlements are worse then where people [lived],” Simeon Mawanza, who authored the Amnesty report, told the BBC.

“If there is no serious investment by the government, these people will be condemned to a life of poverty and suffering.”

Mr Coltart said he was aware that unregistered schools had “mushroomed” because of the relocations and he was was trying to deal with the issue.

In 2008, 90,000 teachers were on strike and 8,000 schools were closed, meaning that children received only 27 “educational days”, the education minister said.

“There was a calamitous situation… Our policy has been to stabilise the education sector, but we acknowledge we still got a lot of work to do,” he told the BBC.

Amnesty said young women it had spoken to had decided to get married because they could no longer go to school.

It quoted one a 17-year-old girl as saying she married “so that I could have someone to provide for me. I did not want to go into sex work like most of the girls who dropped out of school”.

Amnesty said many of those evicted were promised basic housing but they are still living in poorly built shacks and plastic shelters.

The evictions were widely seen at the time as an attempt by the Zanu-PF government to disrupt growing support for the MDC in the build-up to the 2005 parliament election.

Zanu-PF won the poll, which the MDC condemned as a sham.

Three years later, after disputed and violence-marred presidential and parliamentary elections, Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe agreed to form a coalition government.

Mr Mugabe has said new elections, which will herald the end of the coalition, will take place next year.

Tension between the two parties has been rising ahead of the poll.

The Guardian

By David Smith

4 October 2011

Guy Scott says post-colonial condition is behind Zambia and urges other African states to move beyond race.

Guy Scott believes his appointment could push other African nations to come to terms with their colonial histories.

He is outspoken, has the popular touch and just became the second most powerful man in Zambia. He also possesses something now rarely seen at the top of African politics: white skin.

Guy Scott, born to British immigrants in what was then Northern Rhodesia, believes his appointment last week as vice-president could push other African countries to come to terms with their colonial histories and move beyond race. One senior Zambian figure described it as “the crossing of the political Rubicon”.

Effectively just a heartbeat away from the presidency, Scott is believed to be the first white person to hold such high office on the continent since the demise of apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

Unlike that coercive regime, Scott won his home constituency by a landslide in last month’s national election and was subsequently named as deputy to the country’s new president, Michael Sata.

In his first international interview since the move, Scott, also a regular columnist and blogger, said: “It feels rather good, especially as it turns out to be a very popular appointment, which is flattering. There’s been no hint of any resentment of a white man being made vice-president.”

The 67-year-old grandfather is an anomaly in Africa, where decolonisation saw the widespread establishment of black majority governance and the dwindling of many white populations. But Zambia, he suggests, is opening a fresh chapter.

“I have long suspected Zambia is moving from a post-colonial to a cosmopolitan condition,” Scott said. “People’s minds are changing. They are no longer sitting back and dwelling on what was wrong about a colonialism. There’s a Caribbeanisation, there’s a range of colours – so what?”

Asked if he could imagine a white vice-president in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which became independent in 1980, he replied: “We’ve been independent since 1964 so maybe we’re a little ahead in the forgive-and-forget game. I don’t think racism has much mileage in Zimbabwe. Maybe it’s a lesson that will push a few others in Africa.”

The impact of colonialism remains a key faultline in African politics. Some commentators have pointed to corrupt dictatorships and crumbling infrastructure to argue that liberation movements betrayed their promise of a better life.

Others contend that the artificial boundaries drawn by colonial powers, and their continued pursuit of Africa’s natural resources today, sowed a disastrous legacy not easily undone.

Perhaps at the risk of controversy, Scott opined: “People are nostalgic, not for exploitation and division, but for the standards of colonial times. When you went to the hospital there was medicine, when you went to schools there were books, when you went to the shops there were goods to buy.

“There is a sense of these as being ‘white man’s standards’. Whether rightly or not rightly is another matter.”

Born in Livingstone, Scott’s background is intertwined with Britain’s imperial age. His father, from Glasgow, emigrated to Northern Rhodesia in 1927 and worked as a doctor on the railway conceived by Cecil Rhodes, as well as becoming a leading politician, lawyer and newspaper publisher.

His mother, from Watford, moved there in 1940. Scott studied maths and economics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, gained a doctorate in cognitive science at Sussex University, and lectured and researched in robotics at Oxford. He has two sons living in Britain, a daughter studying there and another son working in Zambia. Scott has spent years working for the Zambian government. He is a former agriculture minister credited with steering the country out of a food crisis after a drought in the early 1990s.

Mark Chona, former special assistant for political affairs under Zambia’s founding president Kenneth Kaunda, said Scott was popular because “he followed in his father’s footsteps.”

He explained: “His father, Dr Alexander Scott, was a politician who represented African interests when they could not represent themselves in the colonial parliament. The family have been identified with African interests for years. So Guy Scott won massively against many ‘native’ Zambians in his constituency.”

Of the significance of Scott’s appointment, Chona said: “It shows people are colour blind and what they are looking at is performance, not colour. To that extent, it’s not strange and surprising, but for others it probably is. Here colour doesn’t matter.

“It very much indicates that Zambia has moved very far. It is the crossing of the political Rubicon in the thinking of Zambians that we are getting used to having a white vice-president.”

Scott’s high profile is unusual but not unique.

Despite the mass eviction of white farmers and president Robert Mugabe’s fiercely racial rhetoric, Zimbabwe has a white education minister, David Coltart. Roy Bennett, a senior ally of prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, is also white. In South Africa, numerous white activists joined the fight against apartheid and some went on to hold posts in the African National Congress government.

The continued economic power of the white minority remains a highly contentious issue.

Blessing-Miles Tendi, a Zimbabwean political analyst and expert in African history and politics at Oxford University, said: “Zimbabwe has already gone down the road of racial inclusiveness in government. Mugabe followed a policy of reconciliation in 1980. A number of white Rhodesian elements were in government while the colonial era heads of intelligence and the military were retained.

“Other African countries simply lack signficant numbers of local whites so its a hard example to replicate. In other countries the memory of white domination is still too recent and whites control disproportionate amounts of economic wealth (South Africa and Namibia are good examples) to the degree that replicating Zambia’s example is a bit far-fetched for now.”

New Zimbabwe.com

4 October 2011

Sundowns boss Patrice Motsepe says the club will accept any punishment meted out to his players Method Mwanjali and Nyasha Mushekwi after they were named in a ZIFA report into match fixing.

FIFA has encouraged ZIFA to impose severe penalties, including life bans, on close to 80 players, coaches and ex-ZIFA officials revealed to have taken bungs from Asian betting syndicates to lose matches while playing for Zimbabwe.

Mushekwi and Mwanjali, who captains both his country and Sundowns, insist they were mere pawns along with their teammates in an elaborate racket orchestrated by the former ZIFA CEO, Henrietta Rushwaya, who was sacked from her job.

Motsepe said: “This is not only an issue of a legal matter but also of ethics.

“We will cooperate fully with FIFA and the officials from Zimbabwe with whatever they want from us. It is important that we not only comply with the rules but also promote the spirit of fair play and ethics that FIFA espouses.”

Rushwaya, according to the ZIFA probe, organised several unsanctioned trips to Asian countries between 2007 and 2009 by the national team.

Singaporean national Wilson Raj Perumal, now serving time in a Finland jail after admitting fraud and match fixing there, paid Zimbabwe players thousands of dollars to lose matches by a set score. Rushwaya is thought to be pocketed up of US$250,000 in the scam which also sucked in club side, Monomotapa.

ZIFA’s former programmes officer, Jonathan Musavengana, and marketing officer, Harry Taruva, are also damned by the ZIFA probe report which has been handed over to the police, FIFA and Sports Minister David Coltart.