Herald
20 May 2009

Harare — The Culture Week celebrations are back with a bang and this year there are no lowlights with several standout activities lined up throughout the country to mark the seven-days of plenty.
One of the highlights at the launch ceremony held at the Zimbabwe College of Music in Harare on Monday night was a performance by poet – Mafumhe Mutasa otherwise known as Dapikushagada in poetry circles.

Dressed in traditional attire that blended well with the backdrop, Dapikushagada mesmerised the audience that included the Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture Senator David Coltart with a high-energy recital of a befitting poem titled “Our Culture Is Not”.

In the poem, he sought to tell the various aspects of culture giving examples of how people often misconstrue culture. By and large, the Shona verse sent the audience in jibes of laughter as he delivered a short but flawless act.

Dapikushagada also features in a Shona soap opera called Tiriparwendo. Another show stopping performance came from the Murewa based Jerusalem drummer – Douglas Vambe who is credited for creating the ZBC news bulletin signature tune.

Indeed, Vambe is arguably one of the best Mbende drummers to emerge from his rural home of Murewa. He almost single handedly injected frenzy into the audience by using two drums simultaneously.

In true celebration of our cultural diversity jazz diva Rute Mbangwa also took to the stage and turned the auditorium into a dance floor. She churned some of her best songs from her two albums If Only My Heart Had a Voice to the latest Rute Goes Kumanginde (her fantasyland).

Rute has distinguished herself a solo artiste and many jazz lovers enjoy her singing as much as they do the sound. With more exposure and appreciative fan base, Rute is set to scale dizzy heights.

This year’s commemorations are being held under the banner: “Culture and Youth” and will run until Saturday in all the country’s 10 provinces. The National Arts Council of Zimbabwe said this year’s spotlight would be Matabeleland South province whose official launch was yesterday at Gwanda High School.

The Zimbabwe National Commission for Unesco will host a one-day seminar on the role of the cultural industries in national development. Elsewhere in Harare, there is going to be performing arts bash in the Harare Gardens.

The Culture Week first came into as part of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity that was mooted by Unesco in 2001. They then proclaimed May 21 as the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, and in Zimbabwe, the day is commemorated through various art performances across the country.

The Age
Russell Skelton, Harare
May 16, 2009

In a land of continued violence, struggle and fear, the critical question is whether the “inclusive government” brokered after last year’s national election stalemate ever had a hope of success.

ASATU sits in the filtered, early morning light, gently sobbing. She is 22 and eight months pregnant. She does not know if her boyfriend is dead or alive, and fears that her own life may be over before it has started.

A ward worker for the Movement of Democratic Change during last year’s Zimbabwean election, she was dragged from her house by youths wielding sticks and taken to the local headquarters of the ruling Zanu-PF party.

There, she was beaten and repeatedly raped. Five men took turns to assault her several times day for a month. The woman, who had done nothing more than to urge voters in her township to place their faith in opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, had her life systematically destroyed.

Not only is she pregnant from the rapes, Asatu — along with 15 per cent of women in Zimbabwe — is HIV positive. “I feel sad. I feel alone. When I think back to that time my heart starts beating,” she says.

After escaping from her rapists, Asatu went into hiding and prayed for help and to be reunited with her 27 year-old boyfriend, who she fears has been murdered. “I said to God, ‘If these are your plans, I want nothing to do with them. If you are looking after me, then help in my hard times.’ ”

Driving through the streets of Harare, it is hard to imagine the terror surrounding the election, an election that, despite the systematic intimidation of opponents — mass beatings, murder and disappearances — the 85-year-old Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party lost. The stand-off that followed eventually ended in the creation of an “inclusive government” in which Morgan Tsvangirai is Prime Minister but Mugabe remains President and keeps control of the army. Today, roadside stalls offer fresh tomatoes and green vegetables and there seems to be an extraordinary number of imported, luxury cars racing over the pot-holed roads.

For Zimbabwe’s ruling elite, with their fortunes built on illicit mining and diamond deals and milked public funds, life continues uninterrupted. They live in vast walled mansions protected from their people by electrified fences, security guards and watchdogs. Their only inconvenience, it appears, is the international travel bans placed on the 200 more-notorious citizens and generals.

If there was any doubt about Zimbabwe’s institutionalisation of fear, it is dispelled after just a few days in the capital. On the outskirts of Harare, at a secret location, I meet a “venerable” member of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front. “If I am caught talking to you, I am a dead man,” are his opening words. The international media are banned and foreign reporters face imprisonment if caught.

Our meeting takes place in a deserted warehouse. “It is a most dangerous time. The party is divided and there are many who believe Mugabe should not be in the inclusive government at all.” He describes a bleak political landscape. The party of liberation long ago morphed, in Orwellian style, into the party of greed and self-interest. But tensions are rising within the Zanu-PF; a mood of desperation grips the inner circle surrounding the President.

“These are the people who have acquired a lot of wealth and don’t want to lose it — they think they can hold on. They worry that if the MDC succeeds, they will be brought to justice, they will be held accountable. Nobody should rule out a coup. They control the army, the police and the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation),” he says.

Mugabe’s problem, the politician says, is that he has indulged his cabal of supporters for 50 years. “He cannot dump them and he cannot discipline them. He should have retired 10 years ago when he had the chance. Now nobody knows where all this is going, especially if Mugabe retires or dies without naming a successor.”

The politician describes himself as moderate. He knows Mugabe, knew his first wife (“who would never have let it come to this”), and is well acquainted with the rival powerbrokers and faction leaders Emerson Mnangagwa and Solomon “Rex” Mujuru (and his Vice-President wife, “Avarice” Joyce Mujuru) — who, he says, are manoeuvring to replace Mugabe should he resign or stumble. Mnangagwa, often mentioned as Mugabe’s heir-apparent, was head of security when the first massacres of political opponents took place in the 1980s.

Zimbabwe may not yet meet the technical criteria of a failed state, but to most observers that is surely academic — with 90 per cent unemployment, a compromised justice system and a bankrupt economy staggering along on US dollars and South African rand. The United Nations estimates 75 per cent of the population still depend on food aid. And state-sanctioned violence, including the seizure of white-owned farms, continues.

Most of the nation’s factories are in mothballs and, in the capital, constant blackouts interrupt what business there is. Silos that once held grain for export are empty. Harare’s public hospital wards are filled by empty beds, stripped of sheets, pillows and blankets. Zimbabwe’s cholera and AIDS-HIV patients are forced to attend clinics operated by non-government organisations — or, if they have $A10, get a consultation in a private hospital.

On the other side of Harare, in a modest building on a street where the traffic lights wink intermittently, the former union leader, now Prime Minister, Tsvangirai plays a deadly game of poker with the nation’s founding President. Tsvangirai and the MDC were dealt an impossible set of cards under the Global Political Agreement brokered by the unsympathetic former South African president Thabo Mbeki, after last year’s election stalemate.

Tsvangirai won more votes but has been forced to play a subservient role to the discredited Mugabe. The lines of demarcation, like so much in the agreement, are vague and open to interpretation — usually the President’s. The agreement makes no reference to the Prime Minister’s powers and responsibilities. Recently, Mugabe stripped Nelson Chamisa, an MDC minister, of half his communications portfolio — the half that contained phone and internet snooping powers.

Chamisa tells me, in a hurried encounter at a union conference, he is confident of getting his full ministry back. But from all accounts, he is the only minister in the 61-member cabinet who believes it. “This is the last supper for some,” Chamisa says. “Political bacteria and corruption still threaten the Government, but we are shining a torch on it.” Brave words.

MDC insiders say Tsvangirai, still grieving for his wife, who recently died in a road crash, and a grandchild who drowned soon after in a pool, is asserting himself with fresh determination. He told a rally this month he was committed to making the inclusive government work.

For weeks, MDC and Zanu-PF ministers have been haggling over the nitty-gritty of office: the appointment of ambassadors, regional governors and senior public servants, and the ousting of discredited Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono. Gono trashed the economy by printing worthless currency — a $Z100 trillion note can be bought as a keepsake for $US20 ($A26) — and stole money from private bank accounts to keep the government afloat while amassing a small fortune for himself, the President and his cronies.

The cabinet negotiations have been acrimonious, with Zanu-PF ministers sabotaging progress in the MDC-controlled portfolios of health and education. Violence and intimidation by the Zanu-PF-controlled Central Intelligence Organisation, the military and the prosecutorial wing of the Attorney-General’s Department has prevented an international bail-out. In open violation of rule-of-law undertakings, farmers are beaten, jailed and driven off their land; MDC activists remain missing or imprisoned; and this week journalists were prosecuted for printing publicly available information.

It is enough to ensure that donor funds remain at a dribble. The question most are asking in Harare is whether the MDC ministers are being set up by Mugabe to fail. When the next election is held — and nobody really knows when — will Mugabe blame the MDC for unfunded schools, empty hospital beds, food shortages and a spike in cholera and AIDS-HIV?

David Coltart is the MDC Education Minister. I find him on the top floor of the department building, a drab 18-storey edifice in Harare’s CBD. The building’s toilets were unblocked and the water, he says, was reconnected with funds donated by Australia. A polite and genial minister, Coltart is, when we meet, in the middle of an industrial crisis, rushing from one meeting to the next. Teachers have threatened to strike, claiming the $US100 a month they receive is not enough. A Senator and a white minister, Coltart is surprisingly, if cautiously, optimistic, believing the inclusive government was always going to be tough.

“The majority of people in all the parties want to make the agreement work, even though there are hawks out to derail it. We are trying to stop the country from falling into complete chaos.
“I have hundreds of thousands of kids that had no education last year,” he says.

The education system is a shambles. Coltart says he has no idea how many teachers are employed even though 90,000 people receive salaries. The bureaucracy has been loaded with so-called “ghost workers”, Zanu-PF activists who collect wages as teachers but who never set foot in a school. They are the thugs and foot soldiers, deployed to intimidate voters, carry out abductions and enforce Mugabe’s political will. They probably include the cadres who abducted Asatu.

“We need 140,000 teachers — that is the establishment figure — but we are not sure how many teachers we have. There is no computer (data)base. Trade unions tell me the real number of actual teachers is only 60,000.” Like other MDC ministers, Coltart has set up an audit to identify the ghosts.
What Coltart needs most is money. With just $US40,000 a month to operate 7000 schools, he can’t hire more teachers even if he wants to. While Zanu-PF ministers continue to breach the Global Political Agreement, the prospect of an injection of UNICEF money — and there’s plenty available — is unlikely: Britain is opposed to releasing the funds while the farm invasions continue.

Coltart acknowledges there is good reason to believe the MDC has been set up to fail, but he clings to optimism. He says the agreement allowed the country to break the circle of “viciousness” and has provided a way forward. “We are going in the right direction since that truly awful time in May last year (when Morgan Tsvangirai was admitted to hospital after a beating). We have our good days and our bad days.

“There is a critical mass of people inside the Government (including Zanu-PF ministers) who want this to work. If we can improve the lives of people and we get a free and fair constitution, the MDC will be able to take absolute power.”

Another minister who supports Coltart’s qualified optimism is Jameson Timba, the MDC’s deputy minister for the media. While there are many outstanding issues yet to be settled, Timba says, MDC ministers are making significant progress.

He says MDC Finance Minister Tendai Biti has stripped governor Gono of his powers, and found other ways of getting international funds without them flowing into the pockets of Zanu-PF members. Biti also has ended the currency crisis by adopting the US dollar and paying public servants.

“We now have a semblance of order,” Timba says. There is food on the shelves, prices have gone down, and there is deflation.” He says agreement has been reached, but not yet announced, on many big issues, including the appointment of ambassadors, regional governors and permanent secretaries.
But he says serious obstacles remain, including the farm invasions — strenuously opposed, without success — and the antics of the Zanu-PF hardline Attorney-General Johannes Tomana, who was behind the jailing of MDC politician Roy Bennett and other party activists.

Tsvangirai acknowledged as much this week, when he publicly accused Zanu-PF hardliners of deliberately violating the Global Political Agreement and blocking access to international funds, thereby endangering the lives of all Zimbabweans.

Otto Saki, a senior lawyer and co-ordinator of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which has been monitoring the agreement, says violations have been many and varied. Comparing the inclusive-government pact to a “forced marriage that nobody wanted”, he says the violations can be expected to continue.

Saki says the Zanu-PF is split between moderates and hardliners, but he believes the hardliners and Mugabe are dominant. “Zanu-PF is like the Mafia, once you are in it, you cannot get out. Accidents do happen and we have had people killed by non-existent trains and cars that nobody has ever seen.”
He says the future of the inclusive government is uncertain, possibly fated to fail. The Prime Minister cannot quit because that would hand a “blank cheque” to the hardliners. There has been speculation that Mugabe may step down when the Zanu-PF Congress meets at the end of the year. That could pave the way for a smooth transition or, more likely, a bitter and bloody power struggle between his would-be replacements Emerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru.

While politicians haggle over the nation’s future and their own, Asatu says she is resigned to the fate God chooses for her. She would like to go back to school and study — a faint hope for a single mother in a country where the education system barely functions. She would also like to reopen her roadside vegetable stall, but has no money for that. “I do want justice, but God will decide that,” she says.
Asked what name she will give her baby, she says without hesitation: “Struggle. I will call my baby Struggle.”

Russell Skelton is a contributing editor.

Zim Diaspora
Sunday, 17 MAY 2009
Administrator Religion

Zimbabwe Prime Minister and mainstream MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, says he is now a born-again Christian after his wife, now late, took him to church.

Speaking at the memorial service for his wife, Susan Nyaradzo Tsvangirai, held at the Large City Hall in Bulawayo on Saturday, the Prime Minister said his wife dragged him to church just before her death.

He said he had since received Jesus and become a born-again Chrisitian.

Susan Tsvangirai, his wife of 31 years, died in a car accident on March 6 along the Harare-Masvingo highway. The Prime Minister escaped with injuries.

“All along I didn’t know God but one day my late wife Susan dragged me to church where I received Jesus and became a born again Christian,” said Tsvangirai.

“I now know God; I am always in prayer and go to church every Sunday “Zimbabwe is going through hard times at the moment and I would like to advise all Zimbabweans to pray for the country and to pray for all leaders to know God.

Tsvangirai also said his wife was his special advisor in every aspect of life. He said his life had completely changed since she passed away.

“My wife was my chief advisor and since she passed away, life has completely changed for me,” he said. “But I would like to thank my supporters and friends who have stood by me in these hard times.”

Speaking at the same occasion, Vimbai Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister’s third daughter, said her mother’s death came as shock to them as children but believed God had a purpose in taking her away.

Vimbai said as a result of the great support they received from many people after her death, the family realized that their mother was also the mother of the nation.

Minister of Public Works Theresa Makone, a close friend of Mrs Tsvangirai, narrated the life history of the late Prime Minister’s wife.

Makone also announced that a Susan Nyaradzo Tsvangirai Foundation would be launched soon to help orphans.

Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe and several MDC Ministers, who included Sam Sipepa Nkomo, David Coltart, Gorden Moyo and Thamsnqa Mahlangu, attended the memorial service.

The memorial service was also attended by more than 1 000 ordinary people; it was organized Bulawayo Urban legislator, Dorcas Sibanda and the city mayor Patrick Thaba Moyo.

Sunday News
Deputy News Editor
17 May 2009

CONFUSION reigned in primary schools across the country last week as school heads demanded that parents pay US$15 as fees for writing grade seven examinations while the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) insisted that this year’s fees had been scrapped.

Most of the schools had set May 20 as the deadline with Avondale Primary School in Harare insisting that the examination fees be paid by May 20.

School heads called for comment maintained that they had not received official communication either from Zimsec or the Ministry of Education, Sports, Art and Culture to that effect.

Zimsec spokesperson Mr Ezekiel Pasi said while the Minister of Education, Sports, Art and Culture Senator David Coltart had earlier this year announced that grade seven pupils where now required to pay examination fees, he later announced that no fees would be required for one to sit for grade seven examinations.

He said Zimsec was in the process of communicating with grade seven examination centres about the scrapping of the examination fees. An official from the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture confirmed that the grade seven examination fees have been scrapped and said communication was yet to be sent out to schools.

Some parents had raised questions on why schools insisted on payment of the scrapped fees after Minister Coltart’s announcement.

Mr Pasi has indicated that this year’s June Ordinary and Advanced level examinations are still on with a revised fee structure. Both levels would attract US$10 per subject as examination fees instead of the previously announced US$15 per subject.

He said the deadline for the June examinations, which had been set at May 15, had been moved to June 15. Those who had already paid the US$15 per subject will be refunded the balance.

Results of last year’s June and November Ordinary and Advanced level examinations are yet to be released, leaving observers wondering how the examination authority would cope with new examinations while there are still outstanding results.

Meanwhile, some Harare high density schools have been sending pupils away demanding that they pay outstanding first term fees which have been reviewed by Sen Coltart.

Pupils in Mufakose on Friday found school gates locked with school authorities demanding that they pay outstanding fees of amounts ranging from US$85 to US$100.

Government recently slashed school fees to between US$5-US$20 and backdated the new fees to last term. Minister Coltart was quoted in the news explaining that those who had paid the previously announced fees of between US$20 and US$250 would have the fees credited to the next terms’ fees.

Some parents have accused school development associations and school heads of milking parents through unreasonable levies.

SA JEWISH REPORT
15 May 2009
BY DAVID SAKS

ON MAY 3, nearly three-quarters of the Bulawayo Jewish community gathered at the Holocaust memorial in the Jewish cemetery for the annual Yom Hashoah ceremony.

Among those who attended was MDC Senator David Coltart, the newly-appointed minister of education. The ceremony was conducted by African Jewish Congress spiritual leader, Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, who also officiated at a communal unveiling ceremony for eight headstones.

Senior members of the community were called up to light the first five memorialcandles in remembrance of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, while Senator Coltart lit the sixth.

Reminding the gathering that 2009 was the International Year of the Child, Rabbi Silberhaft said that just as fighting for justice and standing up against oppression was a time-honoured Jewish ethic, so was Minister Coltart striving for the cause of justice and human rights in his own country.

While in Bulawayo, Rabbi Silberhaft met with the residents of Savyon Lodge, the Jewish aged home, and with the leadership of the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation, to plan the way forward following the return to Israel of Rabbi David Alima.

During his visit to Zimbabwe, he also attended the Yom Ha’atzmaut ceremony in Harare with non-resident Israel Ambassador Ilan Baruch.

With regard to the prevailing mood in the crisis-torn country, Rabbi Silberhaft observed that under the new finance minister there was a definite sense that the economy was beginning to improve. However, fears of future arbitrary acts of nationalisation in light of the fact that Robert Mugabe remained in power, continued to act as a brake on internationalinvestment.

Rabbi Silberhaft was gratified to report that the new SGOFOTI (“Support Group of Families of Terminally Ill) library, established through donations of books by the organisation Australian Books for
Children of Africa, has been named the Moshe Library. This was not just because he had been involved in bringing the books to Zimbabwe, but because “Moshe” is also a popular African name.

VOA
By Peta Thornycroft
Harare
14 May 2009

This week in Harare the European Union hosted an environmental conference in Zimbabwe which organizers hope would start a multi-party conversation about land ownership and use. The issue continues to be at the center of the country’s political conflict.

EU ambassador Xavier Marchel, who has been the lead in the West’s uneasy relationship with Zimbabwe’s shaky government of national unity, was instrumental in organizing the conference.

The plan was to get Zimbabwe government officials to engage with western diplomats and each other about the sustainable use of land and natural resources.

Marchel even managed to persuade President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF to take part in discussions on how to rescue Zimbabwe’s devastated natural resources.

And while the language of government officials is usually muted, at the conference they uniformly made it plain that in the past few decades, Zimbabwe’s natural resources have been devastated.

Education Minister David Coltart did not mince his words, saying these resources have, in effect, been raped. “Massive deforestation, unrestrained poaching that has seen the decimation of much of our wildlife; unrestrained gold panning which has all but destroyed many of our river systems; the regular and deliberate veld fires that have set every winter and every spring,” said Coltart.

Coltart told the conference the impact of all of this was recently graphically demonstrated to him on a visit to the Matopos, one of the country’s top national parks.

“I took my family and guests for a drive through the Matopos National Park and we spent the entire day driving through the game reserve and the rest of the national park, and the entire national park had been burnt,” said Coltart.

Zimbabwe’s liberation war, which ended in 1980, was mainly about land ownership and the franchise for black Zimbabweans. After President Robert Mugabe came to power, his many critics argued that he was using land ownership reform as a means of patronage.

This criticism greatly intensified when he launched his chaotic land reform program following the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change in 2000. The program saw more than 4,000 commercial farmers removed from their farms, and food production plummet.

Mandivamba Rukuni, a well known agricultural economist and advisor to the World Bank, told conference attendees that 15 years ago he tried to advise Mr. Mugabe about progressive land reform when he was chairman of Mr. Mugabe’s Land Reform Commission. He said his advice was ignored.

Rukuni added that securing property rights so that the majority of the people were the custodians of the environment was what he called “deceptively simple.” Property rights should be secured by the constitution.

Minister of State Gordon Moyo represented Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai at the conference and said the inclusive government knows that Zimbabwe’s current lack of agricultural production affected the whole economy including the communal areas, and that he knew the inclusive government was moving slowly to resolve the land conflict.

“The pace is slow, I know people are frustrated,” he said. “The people themselves out there in the rural areas are also frustrated by the slow, snail pace, of us attending to issues of productivity in the farms, both in the ex-commercial farms, commercial farms, in the communal land.”

Moyo, from the MDC, noted the current unity government is transitional, and consequently it is more complicated to get things done. Apparently alluding to officials in Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, he said hazards and obstacles are often put in the way of progress. But he said, he and his party are determined to make it work.

“We shall not be frustrated out of the inclusive government,” said Moyo. “We are really determined to be part of it, to change it, to make it right, to make things work so that we can attend to poverty in the communal areas, re-capitalization of our industries, recovery of our economy, recovery of our agricultural sector and to make sure our country is back on its feet again.”

Moyo said that Zimbabwe’s agricultural production, its environment and natural areas are central to his country’s recovery. But he said Zimbabwe cannot begin the task of rehabilitation without the assistance and financial support from western governments.

“The new philosophy, the new world view of the inclusive government is to engage the world,” said Moyo. “We can talk about good ideas, but if you don’t get resources, if you don’t get support, it will be just good ideas that will be shelved somewhere and they will develop cobwebs without being implemented.”

Following the formation of the inclusive government 100 days ago, harassment of the few remaining white farmers escalated dramatically. Few will grow wheat this winter and by year’s end it is likely that millions of Zimbabweans will again need food aid. Communal farmers, who grow most of the staple food maize, say they are unable to farm nowadays as they do not get seeds and other inputs they need.

Financial Gazette
Thursday, 14 May 2009

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told the nation on May 1 that the government was broke. What he did not say was that the government was so broke that it could not even raise the US$3,1 million that is needed to release the results of the students who sat national examinations last year.
What a disaster!

Education Minister David Coltart seems to have done a commendable job to get teachers back to work. But of what use is that if students are going to sit examinations that no one will mark?
The failure by the Zimbabwe Schools Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) to release Grade 7, Ordinary Level and Advanced Level results for last year is not just a national tragedy; it is an embarrassment to the nation.

How can a nation go about its daily business, come up with 100-day plans, short-term economic recovery programmes, the road to 2010, and a string of other fancy blueprints when it can lose an entire generation simply because it has failed – or has no plan – to raise US$3,1 million?

There is no problem with planning and looking ahead, but shouldn’t first things be done first? Let’s get the results out first. Why was there a rush to reopen schools before the examination results were out?
According to the Short-Term Emergency Recovery Programme, the government requires US$440 million to address the “immediate challenges” in the education sector. Can it raise this amount when it is struggling to raise US$3,1 million?

Credit lines for the country so far announced exceed US$800 million. Are these just for industry and commerce? How about services?

Maybe the failure by the government to get money to release the results is a wake up call for the nation to re-examine itself.

Over the past decade Zimbabweans have developed a dependence mentality. They have been conditioned to think that the government will provide solutions to all their problems. If the government is not able to, there are always donors ready to chip in.

Because it had presses at the ready to print any amount it wanted, the government has never admitted it was broke. That era is over. We are now in a new era, an era of openness.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai clearly showed this when he admitted that the government was broke. This was a very humbling statement for a man of his stature. No donor has so far come forward with the US$3,1 million that ZIMSEC needs. So, what should be done?

The government has no money. It gets its money from the people. So, why should the government not involve the parents of the affected children? They know how the delay has wrecked their lives and those of their children?

Would the government not be able to raise the US$3,1 million if it asked each parent to pay say US$1 for every child who wrote Grade 7, US$2 for each one who wrote Ordinary-Level and US$3 for those who wrote Advanced Level?

Would parents object to this? Certainly not, because the waiting has been too long and very painful! It is cheaper to get your child back into class than to keep him or her at home.

The figures could even be lower if ZIMSEC tells the nation how many children wrote examinations last year. The Financial Gazette was not able to get the figures over the past two days because of the bureaucracy involved.

There are also well-wishers who can help provided the appeal comes from the right people and not the government.

For years, there have been reports that more than three million Zimbabweans are in the diaspora. If each one contributed one greenback this would raise the amount required.

What should be of paramount importance to everyone is that the nation cannot be held to ransom over US$3,1 million. This is exactly what is happening.

Maybe the new government is not working as smoothly as it should. Maybe it is not working as a team, each trying to promote his or her own portfolio to build his or her profile because the “transitional arrangement” is not going to last.

We have people like Gorden Moyo, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office. Moyo is an experienced fundraiser who built Bulawayo Agenda to what it is today with branches in Gwanda, Plumtree, Hwange, Gweru, just to name but a few.

He was also instrumental in getting the ratepayers association to challenge the residents association. Would he not be able to raise that kind of money given the task?

Someone ought to do something. Our children will not look too kindly at us years from today when they realise that an entire nation was not able to raise US$3,1 million to get their results out so that they could proceed with their education.

Coltart has allowed pupils to proceed with their education but certificates like Ordinary Level are very important, more important that Advanced Level because even if you obtain a degree or degrees, employers will still want you to produce your Ordinary Level certificate.

Maybe those with the capacity and influence to deal with this niggling problem are not bothered to swing into action because they can always send their children to better schools outside the country. But how many are they and can these privileged few members of our society get the country working again? Certainly not!

The solution is for every well meaning citizen of this great nation to put aside personal interests and work out a solution that favours those in the majority. Only then can Zimbabweans start to entertain prospects of a revival not only in the education sector, but in the rest of the country’s economy.

The Herald
13 May 2009

Harare — EDUCATION, Arts, Sports and Culture Minister David Coltart has been selected to co-chair the constitution-making parliamentary select committee.

This means all the parties to the Global Political Agreement have now seconded representatives to co-chair the committee.

Zanu-PF recently appointed Chivi Central Member of the House of Assembly Cde Munyaradzi Mangwana while MDC-T nominated Nyanga North Member of the House of Assembly Mr Douglas Mwonzora.

The appointment of co-chairpersons is an interim arrangement meant to allow the principals to the GPA to consider whether it should be chaired by an independent person or not.

Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga confirmed the appointment of Minister Coltart by the MDC.

“We now have Minister Coltart co-chairing, that is as what it should be, because all political parties should appoint their representatives to co-chair the select committee,” said Minister Matinenga in an interview.

He said the select committee, which held its induction course in Bulawayo last week, should start its work in earnest soon.

“Thematic sub-committees should be identified and this is the responsibility of everybody and we need to get every stakeholders’ involvement from the beginning,” he said.

The select committee is expected to gather people’s views, convene an all-stakeholders meeting and subject the draft constitution to a referendum next year.

SW Radio Africa
By Lance Guma
11 May 2009

A week after the Ministry of Education averted a teachers strike by promising various incentives, civil service unions have issued a 7 day ultimatum to the government to also review their US$100 monthly allowances. Teachers were promised a review of their salaries, free education for their children and exemption from bank charges, among other benefits. The civil service unions are however unhappy at what they feel is a divide and rule tactic and say these concessions were made outside the normal negotiating forum for civil servants.

According to the Zimbabwe Standard weekly newspaper, civil servants representatives met in Harare on Friday and demanded a review of their salaries, in line with what the teachers have been promised. Jeremiah Bvindiri, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA), said they had given the government up to the 15th May to resolve their concerns, or face a job boycott. ‘We take great exception in the divide-and-rule practice by government, where some sectors have decided to flout the rules of the National Joint Negotiating Council,’ the PSA said in a statement.

Interestingly, under sole ZANU PF rule the PSA has not led many general strikes against the government. Commentators have pointed out that the sudden willingness to strike, over allowances that are considerably better than what they used to earn before, could be construed as an attempt to undermine the MDC who are in charge of the Finance, Education and Civil Service Ministries. The same union kept quite during the days of trillion-percentage inflation for many, many months, before the unity government was in place. It has been suggested that after failing to manipulate teachers to go on strike last week, ZANU PF has now turned its attention to the civil service.

The re-opening of some schools, hospitals, gold mines, and the payment of US$100 monthly allowances to civil servants, have been viewed as some of the few successes of the coalition and critics believe Mugabe is trying to undermine all of this in his turf war with Tsvangirai. But the PSA, which is the umbrella body of all five public sector unions, tried to untangle themselves from this allegation by insisting they have been patient enough in waiting for the coalition government to work. In their statement they said they felt the coalition ‘is ignoring the machinery that is supposed to produce results.’

In another sign of the mess that has been created by ZANU PF, Senator David Coltart, the Education Minister, has expressed fears that millions of dollars worth of foreign currency may have been lost paying ghost teachers since February this year. Coltart said they have launched a probe which was necessitated by the fact that there were some shocking figures presented to government by the Salaries Services Bureau. They paid out US$100 allowances to 94 000 teachers, and yet teachers unions said they had around 60 000 members.