Letter from Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum

01 Aug 2010

Dear Friends,

Tonight, 30.07.2010, the Forum will launch, at a high profile event in Bulawayo, the second volume of our “Taking Transitional Justice to the People Outreach Report”. The launch will take place this evening at 6.00pm in the Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel. Key speakers will include Hon. Senator David Coltart, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Education, Sport, Art and Culture and Hon.Gordon Moyo who will officially launch the report.

The Outreach Report sets out the experiences of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, its members and associates, who conducted community-based outreach meetings on transitional justice. The report gives a brief background to transitional justice in Zimbabwe and the rationale for the Forum’s involvement in the process. It describes the methodology used at the meetings and the challenges experienced by the facilitators. The overriding plea of the participants was for truth recovery and truth disclosure to redress past human rights abuses and work towards national reconciliation. The Forum’s Press Release, issued today, and the programme for tonight’s launch can be accessed via the following link: http://www.hrforumzim.com/frames/inside_frame_press.htm and scheduled programme on: http://www.hrforumzim.com/taking-transitional-justice-to-the-people.pdf

Our “Taking Transitional Justice to the People Outreach Report” will be available to read in full on our website after tonight’s launch. We will remind you by providing a link in our next mailing.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) issued the attached HRDs Alert on 29.07.2010. It contains news of the harassment and detention of a Banket Town Councillor and a charge laid against MDC official for allegedly publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the state.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has released the attached items in recent days:

· Today (30.07 2010), the attached Constitutional Bulletin reports on Day 30 of the constitutional outreach process.

· On 28.07.2010 ZimRights issued the attached Constitutional Bulletin reporting on Day 29 of the outreach process.

· Further reports issued on 27.07.2010 on Day 28 of the outreach process are contained in the attached ZimRights Constitutional Bulletin

· The attached Newsflash of 29.07.2010 contains a report of a workshop with the farming community to raise awareness noting particularly the need to protect farm workers from being exploited through low wages and women from gender-based violence and other forms of abuse. ZimRights also encouraged the workers to participate in the ongoing constitution-making process.

· The attached Newsflash of 28.07.2010 highlights the recent ZimRights launch of a peace-building project with traditional leaders as essential players in peace building though the influence that they have on activities that take place in their respective communities.

· The attached Newsflash dated 27.07.2010 reports on a public meeting in Masvingo to raise awareness on torture and its different forms through individual testimony and discussion. Participants recommended that ZimRights set up a local office to enable people to report cases relating to torture and other human rights abuses.

Today, 30.07.2010 the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) issued the attached ‘Weekly Media Review’ (Issue 28) which, amongst other issues, looks at the continued broadcast of ZANU PF publicity songs and the recent unilateral appointment by Mugabe of six ambassadors at Zimbabwe’s missions abroad.

The Civil Society Monitoring Mechanism (CISOMM) released which monitors the compliance of the inclusive government of the Global Political Agreement in the period May-July. Amongst many other items, the report highlights that human rights violations committed by the police and other security services is still prevalent and that unlawful arrests and detentions of civil society activists and political actors has continues. There are also worrying findings about the failure of the inclusive government to do anything for internally displaced people, the denial of food aid on political grounds and the withholding of food handouts from inmates’ relatives at Chikarubi Maximum Prison.

Today, 30.07.2010 the Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT) launches a report entitled “A Fractured Nation: Operation Murambatsvina – five years on” and an accompanying film (“Poverty on Top of Poverty”) looking specifically at Hopley farm. The report provides an assessment of the effects of Operation Murambatsvina five years by analyzing the combined effects of the Operation and the economic meltdown in the years that followed. To access the report and film please see the following link: http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/

The attached Press Release of 29.07.2010 contains the adopted decisions of the African Union’s (AU) 15^th Summit held in Kampala, Uganda from 19-27.07.2010 under the theme “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa. The Summit urged member states to embrace the AU’s ‘Year for Peace and Security in Africa’ by signing and ratifying all relevant AU instruments, including the Charter on Democracy, Elections and Good Governance.

On 28.07.2010 the Bulawayo Agenda issued the attached ‘Daily Agenda’ with news and updates on the constitution-making process. It provides a summary of the constitutional outreach activities including the abolishment of the death penalty, the need for the Government to provide social welfare to disabled persons and also on the issue of a Bill of Rights superficially calling for the codification of the second-generation of right to healthcare.

The Guardian

By David Smith

29 July 2010

Place names, schools, eloquent oratories and, of course, cricket can make Zimbabwe seem the most English of African countries

High tea and cakes to the strains of a grand piano. Rooms with names such as Balmoral, Edinburgh, Windsor, Mirabelle and Edward & Connaught. An oak-panelled grill that recalls a gentlemen’s club on Pall Mall.

Yes, it must be Zimbabwe again.

The Meikles in Harare claims to be the country’s best hotel, and it certainly seems to have dodged the economic bullets of recent years. Its colonial aura, with regal tapestries and framed black and white photos of Harare a century ago, would probably console the establishment’s founder, Thomas Meikle, a Scottish immigrant.

To me too it felt reassuringly, and alarmingly, like home. One night there I switched on Zimbabwe state television to discover, amid controversial jingles extolling President Robert Mugabe, a developing crisis for Siegfried and Tristan in a rerun of All Creatures Great and Small.

Only a few buildings from the era of empire survive in Harare, formerly Salisbury, but there are also parks and tree-lined avenues that feel somehow familiar. In the east of the country, near Mutare, the best place to stop to admire the scenery is Prince of Wales View.

It might be 30 years since independence, but Britain remains in the cultural DNA. O-levels and A-levels are still studied. St George’s College and Prince Edward are the leading schools, with much that evokes Harry Potter’s Hogwarts or Billy Bunter’s Greyfriars. English, the official language, is not only widely spoken, but spoken very well.

I have attended public events where black Zimbabweans deliver speeches with an ornate eloquence, or sometimes grandiloquence, that seems more Victorian literary salon than oppressive African dictatorship. Theirs is a language no longer spoken by the British.

Mugabe, self-declared nemesis of the evil former empire, is no exception to this. His speeches are finely polished and buffed in the colonisers’ tongue: “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me, and me to you.”

Heidi Holland, author of Dinner with Mugabe, recalls being handed tea in an exquisite English porcelain cup by a waiter in white gloves and tails while waiting at the State House to interview the president in 2007.

Last year in a speech entitled The Britishness of Mugabe, she spoke of how he has dressed all his life in austere suits of the stereotypical English gentleman, polished his vowels self-consciously and developed something of a British sense of humour.

Holland said: “What most revealed Mugabe’s fragmented identity to me, though, were the tears glistening in his eyes when he talked about Britain’s royals. The Queen and her four children, her sister and her mother had all stayed with him at State House, he told me. ‘And now, to this day, we treasure those moments, and we have nothing against the royal family,’ he continued – using the royal ‘We’.”

His love for Savile Row tailors is matched by a love for that most English of games: cricket. Mugabe, patron of Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC), once declared: “Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.”

Now, after years in the doldrums, there are signs of the sport coming back to life here. A recent domestic Twenty20 tournament was televised and brought in multiracial crowds of more than 7,000 and corporate sponsors otherwise starved of entertainment. A Pop Idol-style contest toured the country inviting all comers to prove they could be Zimbabwe’s fast bowling star of the future.

The national team is also on the up. Alan Butcher, a former England batsman, is now the coach of a side, no longer dominated by white players, that has claimed the one-day scalps of the West Indies, India and Sri Lanka. Zimbabwe is looking to return to Test cricket for the first time since 2006 with a home series against Bangladesh next year.

Some hope this could be the catalyst for wider social recovery. But there’s no escaping politics. In 2003 two of Zimbabwe’s finest players, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga, wore black armbands at the World Cup to mourn the death of democracy. The men in charge of the game have notoriously had ties with Mugabe.

Ozias Bvute, managing director of ZC, is on the EU’s banned list owing to alleged associations with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Recently I found Bvute in a freshly painted office, complete with satellite TV and Wi-Fi internet access, that some may find suspiciously plush for a country in which many government buildings are shabby and threadbare. But he insisted he is no tool of Mugabe.

“I woke up one day and was told I was on the sanctions list,” he said. “I read, ‘These are the people responsible for the tragedy of Zimbabwe.’ I read that cricket is a political instrument. This is a myth. I do not hold any card from any political party. It’s like the ANC in South Africa: 70% of individuals here have had associations with Zanu-PF. It’s a small society. We know each other.”

Certainly David Coltart, the Movement for Democratic Change’s sports minister, and a cricket fanatic, seemed untroubled. He told me: “There are people in the administration in influential places who are aligned with Zanu-PF, but I’m in a cabinet chaired by Robert Mugabe.

“In the first four or five years post-Nelson Mandela’s release, there were many people in the South African government who I’m sure the ANC had difficulty in dealing with. But it was part of the process. It was the price you paid for a peaceful transition. The same applies to cricket.”

The return of Test cricket would give the appearance, at least, that Zimbabwe is almost back to normal. Alistair Campbell, a former captain and now chairman of selectors, said: “I’d like to see England and Australia touring here again. I’d like to sip chardonnay on the opening day of a Test at Harare Sports Club.”

At the sports club’s Maiden or Red Lion pubs, a summer’s day on the playing fields of England can seem eerily close at hand. Whereas South Africa, that big and brash power of the continent, often reminds me of America, it’s Zimbabwe, the quieter, ironic and perhaps cripplingly introspective cousin, that makes me think of Britain.

I wonder if this is why, like many of my compatriots, I fall head over heels for this beautiful country, both strange and familiar, satisfying a lust for African adventure but leavened by a comforting, nostalgic scent of home. And I worry how healthy that is.

Business Day

by Kaye Whiteman

29 July 2010

At the risk of readers muttering ‘there he goes again”, I find myself making a case for another look at the Commonwealth and its works, even though I wrote extensively last November on the Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). If I return to the topic it is because the Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma has been talking on ‘the Commonwealth and Africa’ at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) here in London. At the same time there is a evidence of unhappiness in some Commonwealth circles over the situations in both the Gambia and Rwanda.

Sharma has now been in office for over two years, and one has become accustomed to his nicely-shaped speeches, enhanced by his eloquent oratory. This one was no exception, examining the strength of the Commonwealth connection with Africa. One-third of the Commonwealth’s members are in Africa, he noted, and one-third of the members of the African Union are from the Commonwealth. After Nehru’s commitment of India to the organisation in 1949, it had become “the handmaiden” of the decolonisation process. Sharma also recalled Kwame Nkrumah’s role in 1965 in the putting of the “democratic” running of the Commonwealth into the Secretariat. In the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe crisis and in the struggle against apartheid in the next three decades, the Commonwealth was “hard at work doing the heavy lifting” The 1991 Harare Declaration marked the renewal of democratic values, not least in Africa, especially once the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) had been set up in 1995.

After looking at the case histories of Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the Secretary-General addressed the Zimbabwe problem, and the “irony that the country that gave us the Harare principles was found wanting”. Sad though Zimbabwe’s suspension and voluntary departure at Abuja in 2003 was, it was “a vindication of values,” and, by embracing those values, Zimbabwe will one day return to the Commonwealth, a hope officially enshrined in the communiqué of the Port of Spain CHOGM last November. He gave a more detailed presentation of Commonwealth involvement in different aspects of governance, especially in elections (since 1990 the Commonwealth had observed 52 African polls), as well as in the new Commonwealth electoral commissioners’ network to exchange information and experiences. A critical test for the Commonwealth will be observing the elections next month in its newest member, Rwanda, with a team headed by former OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim. Sharma, has a tendency to look at the glass half full, eschewing what he calls negative headlines.

Although he also spoke of the organisation’s not inconsiderable development role (“making a little go a long way”), it was the political message, dressed in appropriate quotes from Mandela (“making the world safe for diversity”) and Nehru (“a touch of healing”) it was the political substance that was at the core.

Different perspectives came later the same day from the Annual General Meeting of the Commonwealth Association (former staff members of the Secretariat). While the presence of Zimbabwe’s Education Minister in the present Mugabe/Tsvangirai coalition government, Senator David Coltart, making a strong appeal for international support, was in line with the present higher profile of absent Zimbabwe, other issues were also raised. The CA had invited Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society to speak to their Meeting, and he lobbed some critical thoughts into the benign consensus that tends to radiate from Commonwealth occasions.

Although part of his talk recalled the glory days of the Commonwealth in the 1980s, Dowden asked questions about present orientations, including worrying whether there was any single issue that could unite the Commonwealth in line with its core values. Unless there was a greater willingness to take on causes “you could be in trouble: those who would abolish it, will.” He expressed doubts about having another Eminent Persons’ Group – “the pressure should be upwards, not searching downwards.” More specifically he wondered about the present silence over Rwanda, when even the UN has called for an inquiry into recent troubles. Lastly, I have to record his frank question on the Gambia: “Why is the Gambia still in the Commonwealth? Its appalling government should have been booted out long ago.”

As a postscript, Gambian protesters had earlier been demonstrating outside the Secretariat, as well as the Nigerian High Commission and the Senegal Embassy, because July 22 (ironically called ‘Freedom Day’) was the sixteenth anniversary of the coup of Yaya Jammeh, whose last election received qualified approval from Commonwealth observers. The protesters highlighted human rights abuses, especially the murder and disappearance of journalists, but the Commonwealth, having taken the Gambia off the CMAG list in 2000, now says that any problems are dealt with under the discreet umbrella of ‘good offices’. The only problem is, we never know the results. No doubt it might be worse if there were no good offices at all, but one thing is sure, the protests are going to increase in the run-up to next year’s presidential elections.

The Herald

by Herald Reporter

29 July 2010

The Government will soon overhaul school curriculums to meet key recommendations of the 1999 Nziramasanga Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education, a Cabinet minister has said.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said this at Tuesday’s unveiling of the new Zimsec board in Harare.

“We are lagging behind in terms of development. The current curriculum has not been that comprehensive as it was last updated over two decades ago.

“There is need to adjust and reform so that we meet the demands of different sectors of the economy,” he said.

Minister Coltart said emphasis would be on practical and technical subjects as Government sought to inculcate a culture of self-reliance.

“The current system has been academically oriented and we also have to put focus on vocational training for the development of the nation,” he said.

He added that Government would continue promoting science subjects.

Minister Coltart called for the review of the Zimsec Act.

“The Act is in need of revision as it was put in place when the country had less than four universities. Now we have many universities around the country and it is difficult to get a cohesive and coherent output if other members are excluded because of the Act. This is why it has been taking long to come up with a new board for the examination centre,” he said.

The Nziramasanga Commission recommended equal emphasis for practical and technical subjects and those of an academic nature in the first two years of secondary education.

www.voxy.co.nz

29 July 2010

By Paloma Migone of NZPA

Wellington, July 29 NZPA – Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully could have scored points with the International Rugby Board after an extravagant $2855 dinner.

Credit card statements released today from April 1 to June 30 show more $2800 was charged on the staff credit card for an IRB dinner at Kermadec Brasserie Bar in Auckland in March.

The minister, who is expected to entertain in posh places, hosted the dinner for more than 10 people.

The expensive items on the bill were four Ata Rangi Pinot Noir bottles costing a total $740, with three oysters plates for a total of $156, and bread for $230.

Mr McCully, who is also Minister of Foreign Affairs and Sport and Recreation, also hosted a seven-person dinner with Tongan Prime Minister Feleti Sevele at Soul Bar in Auckland for $747.50.

A dinner at Shed 5 in Wellington on June 13 with Zimbabwe Sport Minister David Coltart cost $417.50 and included two bottles of Seresin Chardonnay for $176.

In credit card statements previously released from November 2008 to February this year, Mr McCully spent a lot of time overseas staying in hotels and eating in restaurants.

Over the last three months, he has stopped in Egypt and China.

Herald

28 July 2010

Herald Reporter

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart has announced a new 18-member Zimbabwe School Examinations Council board as part of efforts to revamp operations at the body.

He retained three members from the old board. The new board is chaired by Solusi University Vice Chancellor Professor Norman Maphosa and will be deputised by Chartered Accountant Mrs Hilda Shindi.

Prof Maphosa sat on the old board and was retained. The team takes over from the Professor Phineus Makhurane-led board whose term of office expired in 2006.

However, that board last met in May 2008 to discuss the institution’s challenges.

The Zimsec Act stipulates that the chairman of the board must be a serving Vice Chancellor of a university. Prof Makhurane ceased to be National University of Science and Technology VC on June 30, 2004.

However, Prof Makhurane was retained in the new board, as was Prof Obert Maravanyika (Great Zimbabwe University Vice Chancellor).

New board members are Paul Themba Nyathi (former MDC MP for Gwanda North), Dr Gary Brooking, Dr Wonderful Dzimiri (Midlands State University), Dr Zifikile Gambahaya and Dr Rosemary Moyana (both University of Zimbabwe). Also on the board are Mr Erison Huruba (Education Ministry), Dr Primrose Kurasha and Dr Leonorah Nyaruwata (both Zimbabwe Open University) and Dr Isaac Machakanja (Africa University).

Others are Dr Donna Musiyandaka (Chinhoyi University of Technology), Ms Nomsa Hazel Ncube (Law Society of Zimbabwe), Mrs Lesley Ross, Mr Andrew Jonathan Sibanda (NUST) and educationist Mr Obert Sibanda.

www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk

28 July 2010

By Sandy Neil

Traquair House is inviting you to travel beyond borders and explore the world’s small nation cultures at the new international arts festival Borders, Books and Bikes on August 14 and 15.

Writers, thinkers and artists from Palestine, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Kurdistan and Sierra Leone will join storytellers from Scotland to guide two days of walks, talks and cycling in Traquair’s grounds and surrounding countryside.
The mind behind the event is Mark Muller Stuart QC, founder of Beyond Borders: an organisation dedicated to harnessing Scotland’s heritage to help promote understanding and reduce conflict between world cultures.
“Scotland acts as a beacon to nations and unrecognised peoples around the world seeking to protect their own way of life through non-violent ways,” said Mark, an international human rights lawyer, who lives at Traquair with his wife Catherine and their children.
Catherine is currently organising this weekend’s Traquair Fair, this year celebrating its 30th anniversary with a Beyond Borders theme of its own, featuring international art and artists from Cuba, Afghanistan, Palestine and Georgia.
The Borders, Books and Bikes line-up in August includes Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sakharov Prize-winner Leyla Zana, who was in 1991 elected Turkey’s first Kurdish woman MP, but was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years for taking her oath in her native language, when speaking it even in private was illegal.
Leading a hill walk and talk on Palestine and the Israeli occupation is Raja Shehedah, author of Palestinian Walks: Notes of a Vanishing Landscape, and winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize for political writing. Two photographic exhibitions, Cityscapes of Palestine and Capturing Kurdistan, also illustrate the lives lived in the two cultures.
Zimbabwean writer and Faber prize-winning poet, Petina Gappah, reads her portraits of life and people in contemporary Zimbabwe, while the country’s MDC culture minister, David Coltart, and the director of Mugabe and the White African, Andy Thomson, discuss where now for Zimbabwe with the BBC’s former Africa correspondent Allan Little.
Allan is also in conversation with award-winning BBC journalist and now full-time novelist Aminatta Forna on her biographical and literary stories of love and loss in Sierra Leone’s civil war.
Radical lawyer Michael Mansfield QC shares his memoirs of a career defending the likes of the Birmingham Six, the families of Bloody Sunday and Jean Charles de Menezes, and Colombian philosopher and cultural critic Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera then argues the case why Latin America should rule the world.
True to the spirit of cultural exchange, the festival also celebrates Scotland’s heritage, with Border historian and broadcaster Alistair Moffat reading tales of the Highland Clans, and Scots storytellers John Nicol and Colin Scott-Moncrieff leading bike rides from Abbotsford and Neidpath Castle to Traquair. Mary Kenny also brings 900 years of local history alive on a wood walk, while Borders writer Fi Martyn Oga leads a literary hill walk, meeting working artists Silvia Woodcock, Caroline McNairn and Joseph Maxwell Stuart on the way.
For more information visit www.beyondborders2010.com

Zimbabwean

By Farirayi Kahwemba

28 July 2010

HARARE – After more than a decade of decline, characterized by allegations of maladministration on the part of Zimbabwe Cricket’s (ZC) top brass and dismal performances on the international stage by the national team, cricket is now slowly but surely finding its feet. (Picture: Henry Olonga believes that Mugabe is a stumbling block in Zimbabwean cricket.)

History proves that Zimbabwean cricket often mirrors the country’s political climate and the coming in of the MDC into government – which culminated into the appointment of David Coltart to the post of Minister of Education, Sport and Culture – seems to have brought with it a good measure of legitimacy and respect in the eyes of the international community.

Hopes are high that the direct involvement of MDC officials in local cricket will paint a brighter picture of the sport, which in the past has been isolated internationally because of its links to Zanu (PF).  Stakeholders are also hopeful that the presence of the MDC will go a long way in softening the stance of countries such as Australia, England and New Zealand, who are refusing to play in Zimbabwe because of continued human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic rule.

Under Coltart
Under Coltart, technical issues directly related to the national cricket team are now the responsibility of former players, as they are the ones who possess the knowledge and experience of the game.

The wisdom of roping in former national team skipper Alistair Campbell (ZC convener of selectors) and Heath Streak (bowling coach) is already bearing fruit.
The two, together with Dave Houghton who is also assisting with the coaching, were persuaded to be part of the technical set up in a development that saw them find common ground with ZC following longstanding differences dating back to 2005.

Other former players such as Grant Flower and Duncan Fletcher have in turn expressed a desire to be incorporated into the ZC structures and there is no doubt that their experience will be an invaluable asset to the sport.

Under the proposed arrangements for the future, Flower – who during his prime was considered one of the best opening batsmen in the world – will be appointed as the national team’s batting coach while Fletcher will be responsible for grooming young talent at the national cricket academy.

According to ZC’s Head of Game Development and Training, Titus Zvomuya, Cricket South Africa (CSA) is also complimenting Zimbabwe’s cricket developmental efforts through assisting in the area of coaching and age group tournaments.

CSA support
The assistance, which is being rendered until Zimbabwe regains its test-playing status, is in line with a cooperation agreement that was signed between ZC and CSA in February this year.

“The support we have received from CSA is second to none. This support has come in many different forms and notably in coaching and age group tournaments. This will go a long way in helping us to become a strong cricketing nation,” said Zvomuya.
Domestic cricket will also have an international flair following the appointment of former Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie to the position of head coach of MidWest Rhinos.

And while the national team is yet to match the one during the 1990s – when the sport was at its peak in Zimbabwe – there are clear signs of a revival on the field of play.

A young, relatively inexperienced Zimbabwe shocked the world by beating Australia just before the International Cricket Council (ICC) 2010 Twenty-20 World Cup after very few people had given them a chance.

In their opening match of the tournament, they registered a comfortable victory over the West Indies and although they eventually failed to progress beyond the group stages of the competition, they won the respect of the other teams taking part.

Former national team fast bowler Henry Olonga – who was the first black cricketer to represent the country – believes the time is ripe for stakeholder within the ICC to seriously reconsider rehabilitating Zimbabwe back into the elite league of test cricket playing nations.

Stumbling block
However, believes that President Mugabe, who is the ZC patron, is a stumbling block to the development of the sport in the country.

“It is a painful compromise, but I think Zimbabwe is on the mend. Certainly it is cricket-wise but politically there is still a long way to go,” said Olonga.

“We are starting to play well in one-day cricket now so let’s use this momentum and get to the stage where they are a competitive Test side in three or four years.
“The way forward is for Zimbabwe to play some of the lesser teams first and if we don’t get beaten in two days then we are heading in the right direction,” he said.

Newsday

By Staff Writer

July 28 2010

The delicate inclusive government has made a sympathetic undertaking to pay examination fees for at least 15 000 underprivileged students countrywide who failed to register for the forthcoming Ordinary and Advanced Level final exams with the Zimbabwe Examination School Council (Zimsec).

The compassionate gesture follows failure by thousands of students to raise the required examination fees. Reports however indicate that many had since dropped out of school when it became apparent they would be unable to sit for examinations this year.

Thousands of prospective candidates have failed to raise the required $10 and $20 fees per subject at Ordinary and Advanced Level respectively with parents arguing the figures were astronomical.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture minister, David Coltart, said government was aware there were many children who failed to register as a result of poverty and schools were tasked to come up with a list of deserving beneficiaries.

“As government we have decided to assist at least

15 000 students who have failed to register to sit for their examinations as a result of the economic situation.

“Government has since asked school heads to compile lists of candidates that need support,” he said.

The underprivileged candidates are being accommodated through the $1,8 million fund set aside for the Basic Education Assistance Model (Beam).

The sharp economic decline over the past 10 years characterised by hyperinflation adversely affected the education sector.