Newsday

29 September 2011

For the past four years, Zifa has been in the limelight for the wrong reasons.

The previous board, led by Wellington Nyatanga, proved powerless to run the game and stands accused of allegedly selling the soul of the nation through match- fixing.

This is the scourge that has affected football since the day Monomotapa decided not to fulfil their league match against Highway in Mutare on that fateful afternoon in 2009 that gave away the match-fixing scandals.

Three years down the line, two reports have been produced on the dirty deals detailing the trips that officials, journalists and players were involved in, leading to the suspension of three officials.

Under very difficult and sometimes life-threatening circumstances, Zifa has started on the road to football rehabilitation and the visit by Fifa head of security Chris Eaton and his chief investigator Terry Stean is testimony of the wonderful job that the new Cuthbert Dube-led Zifa board has done.

Even Eaton, during his visit to Zimbabwe, from Saturday to Monday night, acknowledged the steps taken by the national association and pledged the world football governing body’s support to see justice carried out.

And now what is needed is the support of all State organs in unravelling this scam and the police have already taken the lead.

Three Dynamos stars were quizzed by detectives in May as police began a major investigation into match-fixing allegations.

Washington Arubi, David Kutyauripo and Guthrie Zhokinyi were the first players to face investigators from the CID Serious Fraud Squad and many more will still be called in to give their side of the story.

The Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) is the supreme sports body in the country and most, if not all, the trips took place without their knowledge.

Without proper legislation in place to deal with match-fixing, one wonders why the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture David Coltart has been silent about pushing for such legislation, save for calling for the police to step in.

Instead, it has been Kambuzuma MP Willas Madzimure who has pushed that motion in the House of Assembly to investigate Asiagate via the setting-up of a commission of inquiry.

In March, it was perfectly legal to fix sports games in Bulgaria since it was not against the law. Now it attracts a minimum penalty of $3 000 plus six years in prison if one is found guilty under the penal code system. Zimbabwe can take a cue from that.

Fifa has been unequivocal about life bans on all involved, although an olive branch exists where confessions can be used to mitigate the punishments to be handed down by the disciplinary committee.

And while there are obvious loopholes in the second Asiagate report, it goes without saying that none of the perpetrators ever thought the investigations would reach these levels, nor that Eaton would ever visit Zimbabwe.

But for now, Zifa must get the kudos for a job well done as they take to cleaning up the world’s “most beautiful game”.

Daily News                            

By Chengetai Zvauya          

29 September 2011

Harare – Education, Sports, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart says government intends to set up a professional teachers’ council to administer the welfare of the teachers and improve their professional conduct.

Coltart told the Daily News that his ministry was hoping to bring professionalism to the teaching profession.

“This Council will be similar to the work of the Law Society of Zimbabwe which regulates lawyers, and it is never our intention to monitor the teachers but we think there is a need for this council,” said Coltart.

Coltart said that government did not want to investigate the operations of the teachers unions that are collecting subscriptions from the members.

“There is no law that compels us to investigate the teachers unions and the rights of teachers to approach the courts for criminal or civil charges against their unions if they feel that they are being short-changed by their unions,” said Coltart.

There are three major teachers unions in the country namely Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta), Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) and the Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (TUZ).

Zimta has 40 000 members, and PTUZ has 15 000 while TUZ has 10 000 members.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe Secretary General Raymond Majongwe said his union had nothing to worry about as their operations were above board.

“We are running our organisation in a professional manner and we are also a trade union and our members are free to approach us if they need any clarification from us because we have nothing to hide from them,” said Majongwe.

Teachers have become powerful trade union affiliate with 90 000 members who engaged in a bruising battle with government over salary increments and have throughout the year been threatening to go on strike.

Herald                       

Wednesday, 28 September 2011 

By Felex Share 

GOVERNMENT and teachers’ unions met in Harare yesterday and agreed that parents and guardians continue paying  incentives to the educators until a solution is hammered.

The two parties agreed to convene an urgent all-stakeholders’ conference to determine whether or not to entirely abolish the incentives. The conference is slated for October 18.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said incentives were a “necessary evil” that needed “multi-faceted solutions”.

“Our intention is to scrap them because they are divisive and discriminatory, but this has to be in a manner that does not disrupt the education sector,” he said.

“This is a complex issue and we have to bring in other stakeholders like the Ministry of Finance, school heads, School Development  Associations and parents to see what can be done.”

He said if incentives were to continue in urban schools, his ministry would call for the reintroduction of allowances for rural teachers.

“This is the only way that we can have equity between the rural and the urban folk. This is another reason for including the Finance Ministry. We have to agree on mechanisms that make the system equitable and transparent,” he said.

Teachers’ unions had gone into yesterday’s meeting demanding the immediate scrapping of the incentives.

They blamed Minister Coltart for consulting them at the last minute. The unions said the minister was “using them” to find a solution to problems he created.

Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe secretary-general Mr Raymond Majongwe said they were in a “dicey situation” but would lobby for the removal of the incentives.

“We have agreed to this arrangement in the interest of normalcy in our schools. Hopefully, the forthcoming meeting would provide us with a way to manoeuvre out of this mess.

Incentives must go, say teachers’ unions

“We must have one employer, which is Government and we have agreed to consult so that we do not shortchange parents, pupils and teachers,” he said.

Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe chief executive Mr Manuel Nyawo said while there were divisions within unions, a “win-win” situation had to be found.

“We have realised that it is also dangerous to scrap them now. There has been pandemonium among the union leaders, but I don’t think this is the right time to scrap them off,” he said.

Mr Nyawo said the unions blamed the ministry for failing to consult them when the incentives were introduced.

SW Radio Africa

By Lance Guma

28 September 2011

Education Minister Senator David Coltart has told SW Radio Africa that the controversial system of teacher’s incentives was a ‘necessary evil’ needed to stabilize the education sector. Coltart says when he took over in 2009, teachers were paid a pittance and there was total chaos in the sector.

Under the scheme parents pay a levy to the School Development Association (SDA) which in turn uses some of the money to pay teachers a supplementary income on top of their normal salaries.

The scheme has been criticised for only benefiting some 15 percent of teachers, mainly in the urban centres, while the other 85 percent predominantly in the rural areas, did not benefit from the incentives.

Coltart disputed the figure of 15 percent saying there was no empirical survey or evidence to back this but conceded the majority of teachers were not benefiting and the system was not sustainable in the long term. The Ministry and the teachers unions have this week agreed to keep the incentives in place until an all stakeholders workshop is held next month to try to find a lasting solution.

What has made the problem even more complex, according to the minister, is that there is no consensus between the teachers unions on the issue. The Progressive Teachers’ Union feel the incentives have caused confusion and divided teachers. The Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe want teachers in rural areas to be given rural allowances.

Coltart meanwhile told SW Radio Africa that the proposal for teachers to get a ‘rural allowance’ was a ‘good short term measure’ but that ultimately, adequate salaries for teachers would be the ideal solution. Unfortunately the government is ‘someway off’ being able to pay salaries that can be considered adequate, he said.

Newsday

By Chief Reporter

28 September 2011

The Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture and teachers’ unions have agreed to keep teachers’ incentives in place until an all stakeholders’ workshop is held next month.

Education minister David Coltart last night said the parties agreed the issue was complex and needed the input of other stakeholders such as parents, churches, officials from the Ministry of Finance and school development associations for lasting solutions to be found.

“I have agreed to convene a stakeholders’ conference from 18 to 20 October to look at the issue,” Coltart said. “This means incentives will remain in place until the workshop. The ministry will deploy officials to particular schools where there has been disruption (of classes) to find solutions in the short term, while we work on the long term solutions.”

He said outcomes from the stakeholders’ workshop would be incorporated into the review of the education sector which he was carrying out.

The president of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, Takavafira Zhou, said his organisation supported the outcome of the meeting but remained strongly against incentives, saying they had caused confusion and divided teachers.

He said the incentives had only benefited about 15% of teachers while 85%, most of whom were in rural areas, were going without.

“We highlighted our position, but the government side also told us that the intention was to raise salaries to at least $500 after which the incentives would be scrapped.

“But we strongly feel that they should be done away with unless they are standardised, because they have brought a lot of divisions and chaos,” he said.

The Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe were also against the incentives, preferring that teachers in rural areas be given rural allowances. The teachers’ representatives called on the government to look into the issue of rural allowances in the next budget.There has been disruption of classes at some schools when teachers downed tools demanding incentives.

Newsdzezimbabwe

28 September 2011

GOVERNMENT and teachers’ unions met in Harare yesterday and agreed that parents and guardians continue paying  incentives to the educators until a solution is hammered.

The two parties agreed to convene an urgent all-stakeholders’ conference to determine whether or not to entirely abolish the incentives.

The conference is slated for October 18.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said incentives were a “necessary evil” that needed “multi-faceted solutions”.

“Our intention is to scrap them because they are divisive and discriminatory, but this has to be in a manner that does not disrupt the education sector,” he said.

“This is a complex issue and we have to bring in other stakeholders like the Ministry of Finance, school heads, School Development Associations and parents to see what can be done.”

He said if incentives were to continue in urban schools, his ministry would call for the reintroduction of allowances for rural teachers.

“This is the only way that we can have equity between the rural and the urban folk. This is another reason for including the Finance Ministry. We have to agree on mechanisms that make the system equitable and transparent,” he said.

Teachers’ unions had gone into yesterday’s meeting demanding the immediate scrapping of the incentives.

They blamed Minister Coltart for consulting them at the last minute. The unions said the minister was “using them” to find a solution to problems he created.

Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe secretary-general Mr Raymond Majongwe said they were in a “dicey situation” but would lobby for the removal of the incentives.

“We have agreed to this arrangement in the interest of normalcy in our schools. Hopefully, the forthcoming meeting would provide us with a way to manoeuvre out of this mess.

Sunday Independent 

By Peta Thornycroft

28 September 2011

When Tendai Biti quips that he is a finance minister without any “finance”, his audience in a church hall in Harare nodded and smiled. They knew that when Biti went into the treasury for the first time as finance minister in 2009 he found his Zanu PF predecessor had left him little more than petty cash to run the country and about R50 billion in foreign debt.

Labourers, clerks, domestic workers, vendors, activists, artisans, a handful of mostly middle-aged, shabby whites and many unemployed people understood Biti’s joke because they too were demolished by hyperinflation, the lynch pin of Zanu PF’s decade long tsunami – they too have no ‘finance.’

Biti was reporting back to his constituency last week after months of failing to get police permission to hold the meeting. So he went ahead anyway, but without advance publicity the audience was small, more intimate town-hall conversation than grandstand report back.

He explained for the first time some of the hazards of being in government with Zanu PF, why he and cabinet colleagues found it so difficult to get the country moving again.

Biti told the meeting his party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) ‘saved’ Zimbabwe by going into the inclusive government with Zanu PF which it defeated in elections a year earlier.

He told constituents that during negotiations he had opposed MDC joining an inclusive government but that he can say now, 31 months later, it was the right decision because it gave Zimbabweans “time out, time out (to recover from Zanu PF violence) as we were being scorched.”

As dusk became night around Northside Community Church in upmarket Borrowdale, someone lugged a generator to light up the hall and it tut-tut-tutted into action as an accompaniment to Biti’s heartfelt accounting to his supporters of life in government with Zanu PF.

Biti said the MDC now understood “the levers of power in government. And now we know the myths too.”

The levers of power, Biti says, are not vested in policy makers such as he but in the bureaucrats. It’s public information these days that Zanu PF ministers who nod off during Tuesday morning’s cabinet meetings spend only a few hours per week attending to ministry business. They are either working for Zanu PF or attending to the farms they have been given since 2000.

The permanent secretaries in jobs-for-life run their ministries and are as important to Zanu PF’s political survival as the security forces.

“The bureaucrat who is unelected but who is so powerful that if you are not clever he keeps you busy without being busy,” Biti said.

Many insiders in government say that Biti’s permanent secretary is particularly obstructive.  Mugabe ignores much in the three-year-old multi party political agreement he signed under mediation by former South African President Thabo Mbeki and unilaterally appointed most top civil servants. He is supposed to consult MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai before making any senior appointments.

Biti was speaking to his audience in Shona and English and sometimes interweaving the two and surprised some when he said that that it no longer mattered to him that Zanu PF controlled the security ministries.

He said: “I learned that the secret of good governance is not constitutions, it’s not about the army or the police, it is about love and caring. It is better to run the social ministries.

“It is better to be in charge of health and education than the police.

“We had a vision to democratise our country when the MDC was formed in 1999. We wanted to put an end to 20 years of cruelty, 20 years of theft, of fear, and this has been a long and tortuous road.”

And it is not over yet and the struggle goes on each day often within the ministries. David Coltart, the Education Minister from the other MDC faction, is regularly obstructed by his permanent secretary.

Biti, somehow more physically frail as minister than he was as activist, said: “I turned 45 three or so weeks ago but I feel I am 87 years of age.” And there was muted amusement among the crowd because everyone in the hall knew that President Robert Mugabe is 87.

“My life and yours has been compressed with pain and suffering. So even though you may be young in age you are old because of the experiences, the exposures that all of us have gone through at the hands of Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his acolytes in Zanu PF,” said Biti, a lawyer by training.

“We have been beaten up, we have been tortured, we have been raped, we have been killed they have called us names — dogs, puppets of the west, you name it. I think the only thing we have not yet been accused of is incest.

“Each one of us knows someone killed by Zanu PF. We are not normal. You, we, are candidates for psychiatric treatment. Because we have been traumatised by Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe. We pretend to be normal but this is a society that functions on the culture of impunity.

“If you look in the eyes of Zanu PF, and I sit with Mugabe often, they have the glassy eyes of a dead person.

“We grew up in a nice Christian background, we are very spiritual, so we don’t need the Bible to tell us it is wrong to kill or rape. We are an unbelievable society for the kinds of things we tolerate.

“All my life I have known only one leader, Mugabe. It’s been a long road and people are tired now.”

An evicted white farmer among the audience asked Biti what he would do about compensation. “We did a rough estimate and your properties should be worth about US$3bn (R21 billion), but we can’t pay that although there must be compensation.”

He said the debt to white farmers for their homes, businesses, equipment etc. would best be solved by becoming part of sovereign debt to be settled one day and he jeered at continuing land invasions 11 years after they began and references made by Zanu PF to “new” famers so long after they took the land.

“So,” Biti said with his land-mark giggle, or perhaps it was a snigger, “we have ‘new’ farmers who are 87-years-old” alluding to a clutch of at least four prime farms 60km north west of Harare which Mugabe helped himself to and which were, for years, secretly funded by taxpayers’ money.

He said that the journey to democracy in Zimbabwe was not over. “We are down to the last two stages of the struggle: to ensure power transfer (after the next elections) and to protect the vote.”

Days before Biti’s marathon report back to his supporters in a corner of Harare, Industry Minister Welshman Ncube drove to Bulawayo to address a meeting designed to boost the city’s collapsed productive sectors.

Even mega rich and controversial Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, who addressed the meeting, saying nothing much, failed to attract punters. So the meeting was cancelled after lunch while Ncube was en route from Harare. Bankrupt Air Zimbabwe was grounded.

Ncube, the MDC’s founding secretary-general and a top lawyer before politics overtook his career, at the bar spoke about the largest single foreign investment into Zimbabwe since independence 31 years ago.

He persuaded Mugabe, the “glassy-eyed” final arbiter to accept an Indian bid above a Chinese offer for Ziscosteel.

Ncube, who says elections can only be held in 2013 if Zimbabwe stays within the SADC time lines for reform, came under enormous scrutiny setting up the deal. His landlines and mobile phones were bugged, so was his Harare home and for months he was impossible to find as be worked through the mechanics to get the Essar/ZISCO deal on the road.

“Mugabe preferred the Chinese. That’s his policy. Eventually he met with Essar executives privately and then said ok.”

Without Biti, Energy Minister Elton Mangoma or the MDC’s Health and Education ministers, Ncube and perhaps one or two Zanu PF ministers who want to rebuild the country they wrecked, Zimbabwe would have disintegrated even further.

VOA

By Sithandekile Mhlanga in Washington

27 September 2011

Education Minister Coltart called the meeting after union leaders blamed him for maintaining a policy that produced inequality among teachers as those in rural areas do not receive incentives, and some parents can’t afford them

Coltart said he hoped the stakeholders meeting on incentives will make recommendations that his ministry can integrate into its policies

Zimbabwean Education Minister David Coltart met Tuesday with teachers union leaders to discuss incentives paid to teachers by parents and local school associations to top off very low salaries, concluding that such a payments system is not sustainable.

Coltart and the unions did not agreed to end such incentives, but agreed that a meeting involving parents, students and teachers should be held next month on the issue. Some teachers recently staged informal work stoppages to protest reduced incentives.

Coltart called the crisis meeting after union leaders blamed him for maintaining a policy that had produced inequality and dissatisfaction among teachers as those in rural areas do not receive such payments, some urban parents cannot afford to make them.

Teachers in urban schools receive between $150 and $400 in incentives depending on their schools, plus a monthly salary of more than $300 from the government.

Zimbabwe Teachers Association Chief Executive Sifiso Ndlovu said the meeting coming up is likely to propose re-introducing rural allowances to equalize salaries, cut back on incentives, or urge the government to increase teacher salaries across the board.

Education Minister Coltart said his ministry agrees with the unions, but said incentives should not be scrapped until another solution to low salaries in place. Otherwise, said the minister, the quality of public education could be compromised.

Coltart said he hoped the stakeholders meeting on incentives will make recommendations that his ministry can integrate into its national education policies.

Newsday

By Tangai Chipangura

27 September 2011

After exactly 28 years, I returned to my old school, Gokomere High School, last week. As I left the Harare-Masvingo Highway, driving up the gravel road to the school, the familiarity of the scenery gripped me so strongly it felt eerily like the clock had wound back 20 years.

The old football pitch which greets you as you break out of the dusty farm road from the highway, the classroom blocks to your right, the dining hall at the opposite side, the junior boarding hostels next to it, the Grotto — still standing majestically right ahead — and that imposing structure housing the headmaster’s office bearing the bold inscription of the proud and powerful school motto: “Vincere Caritate/ Conquer with Love” — all brought memories flooding back to the best days of my life.

There are, of course, new structures planted all around the school — evidence of growth and development — but it is one such new structure that struck me dumb, and has continued to haunt me since that visit.

I saw pupils streaming in and out of pit latrines! I could not believe my eyes but true, there, right in front of me, boys — my age 30 years ago — were using the long drop toilet at Gokomere High School.

The headmaster later told me pit toilets had been put up at all students’ hostels way back in the early 2000s when water supply systems “collapsed”. But how could this have ever happened? How could one of the country’s best schools have gone through such regression?

Blair toilets would have perhaps been better. They are a hygienic revolutionary design for a long-drop toilet, odourless, very clean and free of flies. A pit toilet is taking things too far in this age!

If it was a desperate stopgap measure, then it should be that — a stopgap measure!

The headmaster said water runs from the taps only three times a day — one hour in the morning, one hour in the afternoon and one hour in the evening.

Those are the only times that students are allowed to use running-water ablutions. After the hour, all toilets are closed and it is back to the pit latrine!

The cause for this desperate situation is as painful as is the sight of boys and girls running to relieve themselves (supposedly even at night) in the long blocks of toilets at a school like Gokomere.

When Zimbabwe plunged into politically-driven economic chaos in 2002 and the rule of law ceased to exist, the school’s water pumps, scattered around the mission farm, were stripped and stolen. The situation was aggravated by the drought that ravaged the country that year.

Authorities had no option but to dig pit latrines, otherwise the school would have inevitably shut down. So the pit toilets came as an emergency measure to keep the school running, but let’s face it, the long drop is just not the thing at a boarding high school.

What must be avoided is perpetuation of a situation wrought upon the school by a once-upon-a-time national crisis.

School authorities — the church and administrators of the school — are doing the best they can to keep Gokomere on the country’s charts of academic excellence, but a lot needs to be done to restore the dignity of the school.

The object of my visit to Gokomere last week was a meeting of the school’s old students. There are concerted efforts to put together a Gokomere High Old Students’ Association (GHOSA). The determination displayed by members to bring change to the school provides a much-needed lift to the spirit.

Gokomere has churned out thousands of professional big brains — doctors, lawyers, engineers, business executives, bankers, teachers, farmers, politicians; you name it — people capable of returning the school to its former glory.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is a product of Gokomere, like are countless other political luminaries who occupy high offices in the land. They are expected, as are all ex-students of this great school, to plough back to the institution that made them what they are.

School authorities have warmed up to the idea of former students rekindling the fire and it now rests with individual ex-students to take up the challenge — to at least bring back water to the school and pull down the pit latrines.

In various schools across the country, infrastructure has deteriorated to unprecedented levels, forcing many children to learn in the open.

The restoration of the education system in Zimbabwe will require the adoption of cost-efficient and effective strategies by government, communities and partners, with the ultimate aim to rebuild schools to standards that ideally match or surpass those of the pre-2000 era.

Upon assumption of office two years ago, Education minister David Coltart suggested the establishment of Academies of Excellence — institutions that would be established within a framework of immediate recovery imperatives.

Whatever became of this brilliant idea, we may never know, but the fact remains that Zimbabwe’s education pride hangs precariously on the precipice if schools like Gokomere are allowed to plummet to Upper-Top standards — even toilet-wise.

tchipangura@newsday.co.zw

Newsday

Comment

26 September 2011

Zimbabwe’s teachers are among the least paid workers in the country and have, for years, fought losing battles for reconsideration and restoration of dignity to their profession.

They earn around $300 per month, minus incentives – paid by parents and these benefit mostly teachers in urban areas.

It is not only criminal but also grossly immoral for anyone to then seek to fleece the teachers through dubious membership fees, sometimes forced on the poor educators by unions which do not feel obliged to justify their existence.

That the three teachers’ unions could be stealing as much as $7,6 million from teachers every year is shocking.

The Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) collects $10 every month from about 44 000 teachers. The Progressive Teachers’ Union (PTUZ) collects $8 from a total of about 15 000 teachers while the Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (TUZ) also deducts $8 from each of its 10 000 members.

This has been going on for years and teachers have not questioned this because it apparently has not occurred to them that while individually, the $8 or $10 may appear insignificant, the collective loot is colossal and they are paying it for nothing.

It is pleasing that this matter is one of the few that minister David Coltart and his deputy Lazarus Dokora have found common ground and are determined to collectively dig out and expose the worm.

What is disturbing is that in some cases, teachers do not volunteer to become members of these unions. They only discover they belong to one union or the other when they get their payslips.

One wonders if the objective of these unions is really to serve the teachers’ interests because if that were the case, the teachers would not have been wallowing in poverty for so many years.The money that the unions collect – nearly $7 million per year – could have been used very effectively to fight the employer, in court even, for better working conditions of members.

The fact that the country now has three teachers’ unions is also indicative of the monetary drive that has led to union leaders fighting for the cake and eventually splitting to form rival unions.

It is not to do with workers’ representation. It is all about money and now that a probe has been set, the cat may finally come out of the bag.

Given the amount of money involved, it is crucial that the investigation is left as independent as possible from people that may be willing to have their hands greased to slip the case under the carpet.

Teachers must be on the forefront of this probe and they should be ready to press for action to be taken against anyone found to have stolen from them. It is good that a council has been set up by Cabinet to monitor the operations of these unions to prevent this daylight robbery.