Chronicle

14 December 2010

By Fungai Muderere

THE 2010 edition of the annual Ibumba International Arts Festival, which rolls into life tonight at Stanley Square, is going to be officially opened by Senator David Coltart.

Sen Coltart is the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture.

At a press conference yesterday, the director of the festival , Simon Mambazo Phiri said all was set for the festival.

“The festival is going to be officially opened tomorrow night by Senator David Coltart. The official opening ceremony shall see a special show with Siyaya, Amawumbo, Ingwenyama, Kwabatsha and Tumbuka,” said Phiri.

He said there is going to be an opening gala that would see the country’s celebrated artists that include Jeys Marabini, Willis Wataffi, , Africa Directions and the man of the moment , Winky D take to the stage with their various art productions from the top drawer.

“After the official opening of the festival, we are also going to have an opening gala at the Main Arena. The likes of Willis Wataffi, Jeys Marabini, , Africa Directions and Winky D will perform at the gala,” he said.

Sunduza , All Stars provided some value entertainment at the press conference with their accapella tunes that were sung with a lot of dexterity hence setting the tone for yet another ,Ibumba International Arts Festival to remember.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that the festival will have a limited number of international participants due to financial and logistical reasons, chief among them being the new festival guidelines that were recently crafted by the , National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ).

The spokesperson for Siyaya, the organisers of the festival, Nkululeko Nkala, said because of financial constraints and other logistical problems, emphasis would be on artistes from around the country and Africa.

“We are going heavily on regionally recognised acts and artistes as we do not have enough funds as a festival to bring acts from Europe. The new censorship board and the , NACZguidelines on festivals also did not give us enough time to get artistes here on time,” said Nkala.

However, Phiri said they were very grateful to their sponsors Culture Fund, , Savannah Tobacco and Sabela Music Projects among others.

.

.

http://www.redroom.com

Issued by the U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section

14 December 2010

Harare, December 14, 2010 – U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles A. Ray, tonight released his 9th book, a collection of essays on leadership, life and lessons learned, entitled Where You Come From Matters Less Than Where You Are Going.

Speaking at the Mannenberg in Harare during the launch, Ambassador Ray noted, “For you young people, the current and future leaders of Zimbabwe, I hope that this book will encourage, exhort and inspire you as you press on in the goals that you have for both yourself and your country. I also hope that it serves as a reminder to you of the things that matter most in life — not what you do, but how you go about doing it; not who you say you are, but who you are when no one else is watching; not where you come from, but where you are going.”

The book consists of 21 short essays written by the Ambassador in 2010. Each essay is followed by questions or quotes meant to provoke discussion and debate on the issue. Topics include, “The Important of Core Values,” “What is Justice?”, “To Serve and Protect,” and “Citizen Participation Leads to Good Governance.” Many of the essays have already been published in local media as opinion pieces or letters to the editor. The book was published by the U.S. Embassy’s Public Affairs Section and will be distributed at no cost to youth groups, libraries, schools and interested readers.

Senator David Coltart, Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, commented that,
“Often Ambassadors are reserved and it is hard for Zimbabweans to fully understand what makes them tick. Ambassador Ray through his writings has revealed a person who cares very deeply about the human condition and about many of the issues which confront us in Zimbabwe. It is wonderful that he has been able to show that these problems are not unique to Zimbabwe. His wisdom that has been created in part through his wide ranging experience also provides some useful ways to resolve them.”

Comments and queries should be addressed to Sharon Hudson-Dean, Public Affairs Officer. E-mail: hararepas@state.gov

BBC

14 December 2010

Zimbabwe’s Minister of Sport, David Coltart, has called for a police investigation into claims of match-fixing made against the national team.

Zimbabwe players and officials have admitted being paid to throw matches on a trip to Thailand and Malaysia.

They made the admissions in sworn testimony to an enquiry held by the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa).

The allegations of match-fixing centred on a tour where Zimbabwe lost 3-0 to Thailand and 6-0 to Syria.

Minister Coltart told the AP news agency that Zifa “must initiate [a] police investigation right now” because of what he called “very serious allegations”.

But the Zifa President Cuthbert Dube said that no action had yet been taken because the investigation had widened to take in a previous trip to Asia in 2007.

The Chief Executive of Zifa, Henrietta Rushwaya, was fired in October, having been accused of failing to account for a loan made to Zifa of US$103 000 and authorising a 2008 trip to Malaysia where elite club Monomotapa masqueraded as the Zimbabwe national team.

She is hoping to be exonerated through the government’s labour court where her case has yet to be concluded.

The BBC’s Steve Vickers in Harare says that the sports minister’s call for the police to take action is not a surprise given the extent of the findings of the Zifa inquiry into match-fixing, and that Zifa itself has still not handed out bans to the players who are implicated.

Chronicle

14 December 2010

By Sukulwenkosi Dube

EVERY day thousands of children leave their homes for school to acquire education. Parents hope that their children are getting high quality education like they did during their time, or even higher. However, if one walks into any public school today he or she will realise that this in not happening in most schools.
Teachers are half-heartedly or completely unwilling to respond to their call of duty, which is to empower children through education. It has become common to see pupils loitering around schools during lesson hours. One pauses to wonder where their school guardians, who are teachers, would have gone.
Sibongumusa Moyo, who is going for her Upper Sixth studies next year, said teachers generally are no longer as vibrant and hard working as they used to be. “Our teachers are no longer vibrant. It seems like they do not have the spirit of delivering to students, which they once had. We have learnt to become independent because at times teachers do not attend lessons, they would be just sitting in the staff room, chatting.
“We can manage to read on our own but what about our younger sisters and brothers at primary school level,” said Sibongumusa. She said most teachers seemed to be more concerned about their personal problems than the desire to teach. “It seems personal problems cloud the minds of our teachers. As students we are caught in between and we have to suffer for the dissatisfaction of our teachers. The way some teachers talk and discipline us pupils has changed.
“One of my (former) teachers disciplined us with bitterness. She is always telling us that we do not show appreciation towards the effort she puts in teaching us. She says she has to fork out her money to commute from her house everyday to teach us and at the end of the month she receives a poor salary.
“We are tired of hearing about teachers’ salaries everyday. We want to learn not be held accountable for what we cannot control,” she said.
Education is important in the lives of children. Teachers are there to provide children with that education. Gone are the days when people could rule out the necessity of education and opt to use their entrepreneurial skills. Even these skills also require one to be educated.
The Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture, David Coltart recently decried the prevalence of indiscipline among teachers. He said starting next year the Government would supervise teachers more closely in a bid to restore discipline and high standards in schools. He said laxity and lawlessness had crept into schools compromising the standard in the education sector. “There is a crisis of governance in our schools and a lot of lawlessness has crept in,” he said.
“Many teachers are not doing their work as expected, school development committees no longer comply with the law and incentives are being abused while pupils are sent away from schools in bold defiance of the law. All this is happening because of lack of monitoring and policing of our schools. There is too much laxity and a lot is not going well.”
He said there were 73 education administrative districts in the country and half of them had no education officers. The vacancies must be filled, he said, while a fleet of 60 vehicles had to be bought to enable inspectors to travel around districts, supervising teachers.
Mrs Caroline Ndlovu, a parent, said education determined how children live when they grow older.
“Our children have to get education so that they can be able to fend for themselves in future. This world is ever-changing due to the advent of technology and computerisation and children have to adjust to those changes to fit into society,” she said.
She said evidence that parents wanted to ensure that children were learning effectively was homework, which children bring from school. In most cases now, she said this was hardly happening.
“I have a child in primary school. I expect to see homework that he brings home but that seldom happens. Children learn at schools and when they come home they have no homework because teachers have no time to mark because they are probably occupied by other things,” she said.
She said laxity seemed to have crept into schools and the Government had to work on this problem because the future of children was at stake. In recent years teachers’ attention appears to have been diverted to non-core activities. Some of them carry out their personal businesses during working times in order to fend for themselves and their families, as they say the salaries they are earning are inadequate.
Teachers, like all civil servants, earn monthly salaries of about US$160. Over the past two years, they have been battling to have their salaries increased to about US$500 to no avail. The Government says it has no money to sustain the salary increment that teachers want and has given its employees modest increases after every six months.
In January next year, their salaries are likely to be increased up to US$300 per month.
Mrs Thelma Nhare, a teacher at a local primary school said teachers were being forced to find other means of making a livelihood because they were receiving poor salaries.
“As teachers, we do have side businesses though at the expense of lesson hours but what are we expected to do? In my case the peanuts I get as a salary only allow me to pay school fees for only one child out of three other children. Where do I get money to pay for my other children’s fees?” said Mrs Nhare. She said incentives were another means for teachers to get money but not all parents could afford them. This is why some teachers resort to selling this and that to make a living.
Bulawayo provincial education director, Mr Dan Moyo, said pass rates were dropping, a situation, which called for more measures to retain the standards.
“In the past few years, the country has recorded a drop in the pass rate due to various reasons such as the exodus of highly qualified teachers and demotivation of teachers but we are hoping that this will change in this coming year,” said Mr Moyo. He said plans of deploying more education officers in schools were under way. “More supervisors will move around schools this coming year to ensure effective teaching in schools. Supervisors will monitor that teachers follow the correct education norms in their conduct.
“These include ensuring that teachers follow the syllabus, they attend lessons and they give pupils homework, which they will move on to mark,” he said. Mr Moyo said the condition of the education sector was also expected to improve as the ministry was working to improve the student-textbook ratio to one is to one.
In next year’s national budget presented last month, Finance Minister Tendai Biti allocated US$469 million, of the US$2,7 billion budget, to the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture.  Analysts say the budget allocation for civil servants’ salaries was unlikely to improve their well-being.
Industrialist and economic commentator, Dr Eric Bloch recently said the tax threshold of US$225 which has been set was insignificant as it would leave many workers earning salaries way below the poverty datum line estimated at US$502 monthly for a standard family.
He said a minimum tax band of US$300 would have been reasonable. He said the suggested threshold was not even what was expected because US$225 would not sustain many workers, especially civil servants when the cost of living was close to US$500 for a family of six.

Newsday

By Khulani Nkabinde

13 December 2010

The people of Matabeleland want government to have an affirmative action on education in the region, especially building new schools, because the region lost out on such educational development opportunities during the Gukurahundi era.

This emerged at the recent Independent Dialogue session sponsored jointly by the Zimbabwe Independent and Radio Dialogue in the city.

Participants at the dialogue unanimously called on government to implement affirmative action in Matabeleland region in terms of development especially in the education sector arguing the region was lagging behind in that respect.

They raised their concerns with the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, David Coltart, who was one of the panellists during the session held at the Bulawayo Club.

The discussion forum was held under the topic: “The Status of Education in Zimbabwe”.

“Could the minister please shed some light as to what the government is doing for the people of Matabeleland in terms of affirmative action, especially looking at the fact that we were seriously disadvantaged in the early 1980s because of disturbances here? We feel that our area is seriously lacking in terms of development,” said Peter Dube, one of the participants at the discussion forum.

“Our children do not have enough schools here. They have to walk more than seven kilometres to school and that is not being fair to them. Surely they cannot be expected to perform well in such an environment? We understand that in other areas, they have schools near to where they live,” he said.

In response, Coltart said Matabeleland was not the only province in the country that felt shortchanged by the centralisation of power.

However, Coltart admitted Matabeleland was marginalised in the 1980s.

“It is also a fact that the south-western parts of the country were marginalised. It is difficult to initiate development within the budgetary constraints that we have,” he said.

On the need to build more schools, Coltart said: “We cannot build new schools before we rehabilitate existing ones. As soon as we have resources, we clearly have to address that matter.”

Participants also complained that universities in the region enrolled more people from outside the region and that secondary schools in Matabeleland did not have sufficient resources such as science laboratories.
“We are identifying two schools per province to rehabilitate and also ensure that only children from those provinces will go into the schools,” Coltart said.

“We have identified four schools in the two Matabeleland provinces already. These will have laboratory facilities. Through this, we hope to address historical imbalances.”

Another panellist at the dialogue, National University of Science and Technology communication faculty dean Lawton Hikwa concurred with the participants and called on the Education ministry to take up the issue of development in Matabeleland seriously. “We have not seen schools being built here,” Hikwa said.

Sunday Mail

12 December 2010

Sunday Mail Reporter

A PRIVATE initiative aimed at assisting over 4 000 talented but underprivileged students through a 15 million euro grant from the German government is being blocked by several non-governmental organisations which are campaigning against the release of the funds on the basis that Zimbabwe is under European Union (EU) sanctions.

The funds, which have been locked up in Berlin since October, were supposed to be channelled to Zimbabwe through the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Unicef would, in turn, avail funding to local institutions such as the recently launched Teach Zimbabwe for use in programmes aimed at reviving the education sector.

The German government recently wrote to the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture confirming the allocation of the grant, adding that the funds would be channelled through Unicef.
Soon after the approval of the funds, several anti-Zimbabwe NGOs launched attempts to block the money, citing the sanctions while others clamoured for a chunk of the funds.

Education Minister Senator David Coltart would not comment on the issue last week but a German embassy official confirmed the approval of the funds.

A senior ministry official also confirmed the development, adding that they would have wanted to use some of the money to fund a number of projects including those agreed in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with Teach Zimbabwe in October last year.

The MoU entails the establishment of academies of excellence through scholarships for disadvantaged but talented students as well as the rehabilitation of infrastructure in schools to create better learning facilities.

The overall goal of the academies of excellence is to ensure rapid and sustainable recovery and development of the education system, and thus curtail any further loss of national talent, especially among disadvantaged students, through concrete, realistic and demonstrable returns on sufficiently focused investment in the education sector.

“We have been waiting for the release of the funds which we understand have been delayed by infighting amongst some NGOs opposed to progress in Zimbabwe.
“We have heard that some of them are citing the sanctions against Zimbabwe as a basis for blocking the funds but we hope that sanity will prevail for the sake of the intended beneficiaries,” said the ministry official.

Teach Zimbabwe founder Mr Kojo Parris, a respected entrepreneur and former investment banker, confirmed signing the MoU but referred further questions to the ministry.
“We have signed an agreement with the Government. But talk to the Ministry of Education for more details,” said Mr Parris.

The organisation’s other trustees are agronomist and academic Dr Ruvimbo Chimedza and senior business executive Mr Bart Mswaka.
Teach Zimbabwe launched its Zimbabwe Talented but Disadvantaged Children Education Programme under which at least 4 000 are expected to benefit during the first phase of the scheme next year when five to eight million euro are expected to be channelled into 20 schools.

Sunday Times

By Vladimir Mzaca

12 December 2010

Twelve academics who won a $55-million lawsuit against Solusi University after being fired for going on strike have taken a swipe at the vice-chancellor.

The lecturers accuse Professor Norman Maphosa of the university, which is owned by the Seventh Day Adventist church, of fraud and nepotism.

Maphosa, who is also the chairman of Zimsec – the national schools examination board – is being accused of dubiously awarding honorary doctorates to individuals.

In a statement the expelled lecturers wrote: “Prof Maphosa has unilaterally conferred honorary doctorates on individuals without following the university’s laid-down procedures, where candidates are vetted and voted on for their suitability by the General Faculty Assembly for the award of the same. How legitimate are those honorary doctorates awarded so far?”

The lecturers alleged the vice- chancellor went around the system to enrol his wife for a Masters degree at the same institution.

“Prof Maphosa abused his position as vice-chancellor by allowing his wife to do a Masters degree without an undergraduate degree, just a simple general nursing certificate from Harare Hospital,” they added.

They also questioned his appointment to the board of Zimsec. They suggested that the Minister of Education Sports and Culture, David Coltart, acted in an unprofessional manner.

“Prof Maphosa was appointed Zimsec chairman by the Ministry of Education headed by Senator David Coltart, whereas Solusi University retains Webb Low and Barry, a firm owned by the senator, as its legal team and advisor in direct conflict of interest,” they wrote.

Responding to the accusations Coltart said he did not have a direct link with the law firm as he was not involved in its day-to-day running and he does not get benefits from it.

“I am a part-owner of the law firm but I can tell you that I do not benefit from it at present. I last got money from it last year in February,” said Coltart.

Coltart also stated that the appointment was done in turn of the Zimsec Act which involves a broad consultative process and restricts the appointment of Chairpersons to Vice Chancellors of Universities.

The lecturers claim that the downturn in the university’s fortunes should be blamed on Maphosa. “First-year student enrolment at Solusi is down to 15 students from the usual 700 to 1000. This is a cause of concern for the collapsing institution and is due to bad governance,” they said.

Maphosa could not be reached for comment.

Sunday News

12 December 2010

By Vusumuzi Dube

GOVERNMENT is considering abolishing teacher incentives after noting pleas and complaints from parents and guardians for policymakers to take a hard-line stance on the issue, a Cabinet Minister has said.

Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart, said Government was fully aware on the burden caused by incentives on the parents.
He said while he was very sympathetic to the parents and guardians he was also responsible for the success or failure of the education sector in the country.
“To be frank I am very much aware and sympathetic to the parents’ plight with regards to teacher incentives, so as soon as I can, I will definitely abolish these incentives but on the other hand I can’t just abolish them and see the education sector collapse,” said Senator Coltart.
He said his ministry was now awaiting to see the impact of the 2011 National Budget in terms of civil servants’ salaries then they were going to deliberate on the necessity of incentives.
“If the budget realises the increase of salaries, we will then sit down together with teachers unions and deliberate on these incentives, over and above all I foresee a situation where in the new year teacher incentives would be quite a minimal figure if not totally abolished,” said the minister.
The Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, almost doubled the civil service wage bill in the 2011 budget, increasing it from US$773 million to US$1,4 billion.
Senator Coltart also noted that with the budget allocation to civil servants’ salaries there was a great possibility that parents would not be faced with a similar burden in the following terms.
“The allocation is not enough but is also quite significant therefore at the end of the day parents won’t be faced with a similar situation, very soon I will be making a positive announcement with regards to this issue.
“So my call to parents is for them to be patient and await the Ministry’s announcement at the very least the incentives will be reduced significantly,” said the minister.
Meanwhile, the chairperson of the Apex Council who is also President of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA), Mrs Tendai Chikowore said at the moment abolishing incentives was not feasible as the Government had not as yet come up with a proper package for teachers.
“As it stands we are not even sure what we are receiving for the month of January, so our belief is that these incentives must continue until we get a reasonable figure from the Government. As far as we are concerned this war is far from being over,” she said.
Mrs Chikowore said it was ironic that the very parents who were complaining are the ones who had introduced incentives to help lure back teachers to teach their children at a time when they were getting next to nothing.
“Honestly, parents will do anything just to ensure their children get an education so in this case they would be simple assisting Government meet the obligation of teachers’ salaries,” she said.

Zimbabwe Independent

By Nqobile Bhebhe

10 December 2010

THE international donor community has refused to supplement salaries of teachers because this does not fall under their humanitarian ambit, a cabinet minister said this week.  Education, Sport, Arts and Culture minister David Coltart said this at the Zimbabwe Independent-run Independent Dialogue in Bulawayo on Wednesday whose theme was “The State of Education in Zimbabwe”.
“There is a limit to what I could do to address their (teachers’) legitimate concerns regarding conditions of service,” Coltart said. “One of the first things that I did after my appointment was to approach the international community to try and raise money to supplement their income, but unfortunately that was unsuccessful.”
The international community said payment of teachers did not fit under the scope of a humanitarian crisis and to that extent they could not justify expenditure to teachers in the same way as they did to nurses and doctors.
“They were not prepared to incur recurrent expenditure costs unlike one-off payments towards textbooks. They said they are not prepared to pour money into a bottomless pit of salaries,” he said.
However, Coltart said though conditions of service were still far from being satisfactory, he was pleased that this year has been “the best teaching year in a decade in terms of days of learning as there was minimum disruption through industrial action”.
Only 27 days of learning were recorded in 2008, Coltart said.
On infrastructure, Coltart said virtually all schools had become dangerous learning centres due to a decade of neglect.
He said several billions of dollars were required to rehabilitate close to 8 000 schools, but such funds were not available.
The education sector is still in a state of crisis “and a mammoth task lies ahead before we stabilise issues and that all children in Zimbabwe can expect quality education”.
However, participants at the dialogue, mostly from teacher organisations, expressed concern at the safety of teachers during the run-up to possible elections next year.
They asked Coltart what measures the ministry would put in place to ensure their safety.
Coltart said the ban on the usage of learning facilities for rallies would be enforced.
“Last year, I issued a policy directive stating that schools were not to be used for partisan political activity… I am in the process of revising legislation, to have legal measures to re-enforce that policy directive,” he said.
“Schools should only be used as education institutions and not to be used for partisan political activity. Yes, I will enforce the ban on the usage of schools for rallies by political parties in the run up to future elections.”
He said in instances where teachers have fallen victim to political violence he has acted swiftly to protect them.
Coltart cited a group of teachers in Chiweshe and Rushinga who were tortured during the 2008 presidential election, but were intimidated upon their return after the elections.
He said he had to move them out of the hostile environment.
However, Coltart said as minister “it is difficult for me to prevent these incidents from taking place as they happen beyond the realm of the education system”.
However, one of the panellists, Lawton Hikwa, the Dean of Faculty for Information and Communication Sciences at the National University of Science and Technology, said Coltart had a tall order in achieving a total ban due to historical reasons.
“Schools tend to be the most common available utilities used by rural communities for worship, for traditional meetings and also because of our long history of one political party rule which became part of the regime of things to view schools as facilities that could be used for political gatherings,” he said.
Hikwa questioned the “much celebrated high literacy levels in Zimbabwe” and challenged politicians to explain how the country was managing to attain the high levels.
According to the latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Digest released in July, Zimbabwe has overtaken Tunisia to become the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa, jumping from 85% to 92%.
“Zimbabwe has been topical in celebrating its literacy rate and what I don’t hear from politicians is how we justify the high levels. Are we talking of literacy rate as ability to read and write?” he asked.
In response, Coltart said UNDP findings were “deceiving”.
“A few months ago, UNDP released figures that showed that Zimbabwe had the highest literacy rates in Africa.

But I found it hard to reconcile that information against data coming through our own education sector,” the minister said. “UNDP seems to have reached their conclusion on attendance figures for the first four years of education and it seems Zimbabwe does have the high attendance levels in Africa. However, attendance figures do not translate to high literacy levels…We need to question this basis.”
Coltart said most schools did not have adequate test books and “we are deceiving ourselves if we rely on United Nations figures”.

Newsday

By Thembe Sachikonye

10 December 2010

The feeling is surreal. Smoky monogrammed glass doors with polished brass handles.

An imposing grandfather clock; hand-carved, time-worn, heavy wooden furniture.

You can tell just by looking at this stuff that it has never seen the inside of a factory assembly line, it is lovingly hand-wrought.

Acres of space that has that “we have a lot of room” rather than the “we don’t have enough furniture” feeling.

Polished silver in glass cases and gleaming parquet floors, interrupted only by tastefully aged Persian rugs. I can smell the history, the class, and inevitably, the money.

The toilets would, I’m sure recoil at being given such a common label. They would rather be called powder rooms, and I can see why: a purple velvet ottoman, studded with what seems like hundreds of buttons.

Layers of burgundy organza drapes floating lazily in the breeze, pink feather boas flung casually on a hook in the wall and several sepia posters of Marilyn Monroe grace the walls. You can see why it would respond well to being called a powder room.

This is not the inside of a historic building in London, Paris or New York. This is the Bulawayo Club, a building of such grace and elegance, so tastefully decorated (well, apart from the rest rooms), it is what estate agents would call “perfectly appointed”.

The beauty of its graceful structure, its perfect proportions and its luxurious appeal is marred only by the heavy presence of colonisation that is nailed into every exquisite piece of furniture, that rings on the polished floors and stings in the incredible artwork that hangs on its walls. It is beautiful stuff; and yet, it is ugly.

Colonisation really should be considered a crime against humanity. So that in the event that global warming is in fact arrested, and the human race does get to continue, the generations that follow us will remember never to do it again.

Within the elegant walls of the club, there is an Independent Dialogue in progress and the discussion concerns the status of education in Zimbabwe.

Minister of Arts, Sports, Education and Culture, David Coltart, begins by paying tribute to President Robert Mugabe for the investment that the Zanu PF government made into education in the first decade after independence.

He talks about the injustice of the colonial system and how President Mugabe’s government successfully reversed that.

There is not a sound from the audience. As angry and aggrieved as people in Bulawayo are, no one can refute this simple fact.

The ugliness of colonisation is compounded by the insidious and generational nature of its impact. How many generations does it take to recover from its influence? No one can tell, because no one has ever recovered fully!

I am always amazed when white friends wonder out loud whether I should not be grateful, at least to a limited extent, to colonisation for things such as clean running water, electrical light, exposure to new ideas.

Sometimes I respond by wondering out loud whether I should also be grateful for the breakdown of family and social structures, for cultural subjugation and for a multitude of physical and mental illnesses, including HIV.

Occassionally I am tempted to remind them that the first things ever made by human beings were made in Africa.

But mostly I just admire their audacity, their one-dimensional outlook (life is so much simpler when you can only see your own point of view!) and their continuing air of entitlement.

The generational damage of colonisation exists on both sides. The perpetrator passes down his distorted viewpoint to the next generation in the same way the victim passes on his.

On a board above my desk there is a page torn from a magazine which features a Cartier watch.

I keep it there because this watch is an object of such beauty and craftsmanship that I simply enjoy looking at it.

I love Ndebele beading, and I love Shona sculpture too, but I don’t have pictures of them on my wall. Why is this? I am a product of colonisation.

On the one hand we want to celebrate our ability to “cross over”; to appreciate both the Western values surrounding beauty and aesthetics as well as our own. On the other hand we are uncomfortable because our support for African music, African art, and African culture lacks sincerity and spontaneity.

For all the good that post-independence education gave us, there is a gap in our education about Africa and what it means to be African and this is a gap which only the present generation can close. We also have a responsibility to ensure that our children do not grow up with the same gap.

A few years ago we were discussing dream holiday destinations and my (older white male) companion was waxing lyrical about Europe.

“You have to go to Italy” he said. “ The history, the culture, the food, the wine . . .” he was in rapture recounting his experiences there.

When I said I’d rather go to Nigeria, he was shocked at first. Then he gave me that look that people give you when they suddenly realise that you’re “not one of us”.

I still haven’t been to either Italy or Nigeria, and I will probably never be forced to make a choice.

But it gives me hope to hear that for the first time in Zimbabwe’s history students have textbooks for minority languages such as Venda, Tonga and Nambya.

It means that somebody somewhere is serious about closing that gap, and it suggests that the future is in safe hands.

Thembe Sachikonye writes in her personal capacity. Readers’ comments can be sent to localdrummer@newsday.co.zw