The Zimbabwe Mail

12 January 2016

Harare – Twenty police officers were taken in for questioning last week in cash-starved Zimbabwe for complaining over WhatsApp that they hadn’t been paid, it was reported Monday.
whatsapp

The state-controlled Chronicle and Herald newspapers said three officers were still assisting police with investigations.

The officers, from Bindura in northern Zimbabwe, were detained on Wednesday after comments were allegedly posted to their WhatsApp chat group about the delay in payments.

The comments made were “in bad taste” and were meant to undermine President Robert Mugabe’s government and possibly incite unrest among civil servants, the Chronicle said.

Mugabe’s government struggled to pay its tens of thousands of civil servants last month, paying teachers late and only depositing salaries for nurses and doctors in early January.

For the first time, public sector workers did not get additional 13th month cheques or “bonuses”, as has been the custom for many years.

The longtime president, who turns 92 next month, insisted last year that the bonuses would be paid, contradicting an announcement from his finance minister Patrick Chinamasa in April.

Chinamasa now appears to have accurately predicted the challenges the authorities would face in raising the cash.

Many private companies in Zimbabwe did not pay bonuses in 2015.

Treasury uses most of the revenue it collects to pay civil servants. But revenues have steadily shrunk on the back of company closures and the lack of desperately-needed foreign direct investment.

Critics and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change say a black economic empowerment law — known in Zimbabwe as the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act — scares away investors in the wake of Mugabe’s land reforms, which saw up to 4,000 white farmers forced to leave farms.

Chinamasa tried to water down the regulations late in December, but his efforts were spectacularly nullified a few days later by Mugabe’s nephew, Indigenisation Minister Patrick Zhuwao, who instead announced a toughening up of the laws.

The police officers appear to have been shipped by other members of the Whatsapp chat group, as often happens in politically-divided Zimbabwe.

The three who are “still assisting with investigations” are being seen as the ringleaders of the group and could be charged under Zimbabwe’s Police Act, the newspapers said.

There is a suggestion they could lose their jobs.

“The matter [is] being handled by CID Law and Order in Bindura and the three officers are still assisting with investigations,” the Chronicle said.

Analyst Jeffrey Smith of the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in Washington told News24 the detentions were evidence of “an increasingly paranoid regime.”

“There is deepening dissatisfaction in the country, and authorities are going to unsettling lengths to silence rightful criticism, including the jailing of both state and independent journalists,” he said in an interview.

“This is a self-induced tailspin,” Smith added.

Former education minister David Coltart, who is a member of the opposition, tweeted that the detentions were “signs of panic”.

With Zimbabweans wondering on social media how the government will pay civil servants in the coming months, the government is desperately trying to find ways of raising revenue. Fines for road infractions have been increased five-fold, while travellers have had the amount of goods they’re allowed to bring into Zimbabwe without paying duty cut by a third.

Informal sector workers – small-scale businesspeople, car repairers, used clothes merchants, food sellers and many others – are unhappy with plans to extract taxes from them.

The sector is estimated to employ at least 80 percent of the southern African country’s workers.

State-run media insist that 2016 will be a good year, with the Sunday Mail reporting in its latest edition that it would be a “year of economic boom”.

Government officials still mostly attribute Zimbabwe’s problems to sanctions they say were illegally imposed on Zimbabwe in the wake of the land reform programme.

The Chronicle

11 January 2016

ZIMBABWE – ZANU-PF and war veterans yesterday blasted MDC senior member David Coltart for his “reckless” utterances that President Robert Mugabe must apologise for the Gukurahundi disturbances.
Coltart told the Daily News yesterday that President Mugabe must apologise as Zimbabweans were a forgiving people.

His sentiments torched a storm among those who fought for the country’s liberation.

Zanu-PF national spokesperson Cde Simon Khaya- Moyo said Coltart could be suffering from memory loss as President Mugabe had spoken about the issue in the past. “He (President Mugabe) has made his statement very clear that it was a moment of madness. What more does he want him to do? I don’t understand what he’s speaking about. The President doesn’t have to talk about it. Doesn’t he read English? If so we can provide him with vernacular books maybe he can understand,” said Cde Khaya-Moyo.

War veterans’ council of elders’ member Cde George Mlala took a swipe at Coltart saying the wounds white colonialists inflicted on blacks are still too fresh to forget. Cde Mlala said Coltart was a policeman before independence and was deployed in its anti-terrorism section that was responsible for the indescribable massacres of thousands of blacks. “David Coltart isn’t the right person to ask President Mugabe to ask for forgiveness. He belonged to the British South African police anti-terrorist unit, the notorious police who went around killing innocent people trying to coerce them to denounce freedom fighters,” said Cde Mlala. He said so brutal was Coltart’s unit that it could rip open pregnant women’s bellies just to instil fear among blacks so that they do not support the liberation war.

Cde Mlala said it was an insult to the country to have people like Coltart making noise in matters that do not concern them just to remain politically relevant. He said Coltart pretends to forget yet he should be the one apologising for the untold suffering that he personally, the unit he worked for and the Rhodesian regime he loyally served, caused to thousands of Zimbabweans. “We don’t expect this from a man like him, a lawyer, and a historian to be forgetting this quickly. I find it confusing that it’s 35 years but he has forgotten. I witnessed some of these things. I saw people being massacred. I’m a war veteran. People were being killed for supporting us, they were even killed for giving us food or identifying our footprints,” said Cde Mlala.

Acting President Phelekezela Mphoko recently explained that the disturbances that happened in Matabeleland region and Midlands were a Western engineered conspiracy. He said Zimbabweans were being misinformed on the Gukurahundi narrative to blame their leaders. “Information we have is that the Americans, the British, the South Africans and Rhodesians … (decided) ‘we need to find a solution to contain the situation’. So they came up with a … buffer zone in Mozambique and Angola to stop ANC from both sides; to stop ANC and the Patriotic Front forces on this side. They created — in Mozambique — Renamo, which was heavily supported by South African military intelligence. And they created Unita in Angola,” he said.

“Come Zimbabwe becomes independent: South Africans get the same threat now. Zimbabwe is independent; the front is open. So what do they do? They create — from a myth, from nothing: ‘Ah, Zapu wants to overthrow you (the Zanu Government)’. (This was) in order to justify, to create something. So that’s what happened. So the Gukurahundi after the war had nothing to do with (President) Mugabe — nothing! That’s a fact. People can say what they want, but that was a Western conspiracy.”

The Daily News on Sunday

10 January 2016

BULAWAYO – President Robert Mugabe has been advised to apologise for the Gukurahundi massacres of the early 1980s that left an estimated 20 000 people dead mainly in Matabeleland and the Midlands.

Speaking in an interview with the Daily News on Sunday at the weekend, respected politician and former education minister in the government of national unity David Coltart said if the increasingly frail nonagenarian did not take this important step, he would never find peace.

Coltart said it was not too late for Mugabe to deal with the emotive issue that had not been addressed for the past three decades, leaving many people angry and bitter.

“The wonderful fact about God’s grace is that God is always prepared to forgive our transgressions if we admit them and ask for forgiveness. The same applies to (Robert) Mugabe and all the perpetrators of the Gukurahundi.

“In addition, I have found that the people of Zimbabwe are remarkably forgiving. The vast majority have forgiven whites for the transgressions of racial discrimination and the horrors of the 1970s war, and I have no doubt that a similar attitude will be demonstrated if Mugabe apologised,” he said.

However, for this to happen, Mugabe needed to ask for forgiveness in a genuine way, a move that Coltart said needed to be accompanied by an attempt to redress the wrongs of the past, in particular the marginalisation of some areas and regions.

“The government must acknowledge that what happened happened, namely that thousands of innocent Zimbabweans were killed unlawfully in cold blood.
“Those responsible for these atrocities should ask for forgiveness from the surviving victims of this sad chapter of our history,” he said.

The closest that Mugabe has come to apologising for the massacres was when he described Gukurahundi as “a moment of madness”, something critics say was not adequate and lacked sincerity.

Coltart said Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party should also announce programmes to “correct the injustices through communal reparations” that could be repaid “in the form of construction of roads, hospitals, clinics and schools in the affected areas”.

He said measures should also be introduced to ensure that the remains of those still lying in mass graves are exhumed, identified, returned to their families and reburied at government expense.

“The history of what happened should be included in the educational curriculum so that future generations learn about what happened and its lessons so that we never repeat these horrors again.

“Laws should be introduced to ensure that some people, who for example still can’t get birth certificates, should have their rights respected,” he sad.

The former Cabinet minister said the only way for Zimbabwe to have meaningful and everlasting peace was through confronting the past.

“There remains thousands of victims of Gukurahundi whose rights are still denied. The failure to address this blot on our history continues to fester.

“We will never know real reconciliation and peace in our country until we confront our past, not just regarding the Gukurahundi but also the 1970s war.
“It is important that these sad chapters be closed so that the nation moves forward.

“This is not a case of reopening healed wounds, but a case of healing wounds which still rot and fester just below the surface,” he added.

Recently, Zanu PF elder Cephas Msipa penned a book that set the cat among the pigeons within the ruling party and government circles, as it raised questions around Gukurahundi and Mugabe’s reluctance to ask for forgiveness.

In the incisive book titled In Pursuit of Freedom and Justice: A Memoir, Msipa — a close ally of Mugabe — dismissed the official massaging of narratives on the Gukurahundi atrocities as “a moment of madness”, saying as the massacres happened over a period spanning more than five years, and they could not therefore be described as such.

The Standard

3 January 2016

On New Year’s Eve, Regai Mutunhu paced up and down her maize field aimlessly in the scorching heat, looking up to the skies, hoping for a miracle.

Mutunhu has been praying that the rains may fall in the next few days to save her knee-level crop that has succumbed to the prolonged dry spell.
The euphoria that characterised the coming in of 2016 could not lift her spirits.

“Not this year again,” she said, her face betraying the fear and uncertainty deep down in the mother of three, hailing from Masvingo south communal lands.

“It has been almost 10 years since we last had a bumper harvest,” she said.

“Last year, it was a mixed bag — some got a little from the fields which did not last them to the next farming season, while others like me literally got nothing.

“This time around, we thought our fortunes would change for the better, but with the look of things, it seems we are again headed for disaster because of the erratic rains we have received so far.”

She said they had to contend with having a basic meal once or twice a day because of the food shortages spawned by a ravaging drought in the last farming season.

Regai is not the only communal farmer in such a precarious predicament as hundreds others are staring starvation in the face.

The prolonged dry spell that has hit Masvingo province for the past weeks has led to moisture stress, resulting in most crops wilting.

Most affected areas are Gutu, Chivi, Bikita, Zaka, Chiredzi and Mwenezi.

In Chivi, an arid district which hardly receives good harvests, Grace Murombeni said she had almost given up on rain-fed agriculture as it has failed since time immemorial.

“I had planted well just like others after struggling to raise money to buy maize seed,” she said.

“The germination was not so good and I do not have money to buy another seed. I see that as a waste of money since the crops are almost wilting.”

Department of Agriculture and Rural extension (Arex) provincial agronomist, Sabina Chaduka could not be reached to provide an update on the state of affairs with regards to crops in the province.

Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation deputy minister, Davies Marapira could also not be reached for a comment as his mobile phone was switched off.

However, an Arex official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the press, said if the rains did not fall in the next week, most crops would be a write-off.

“The situation is not very pleasing. Most crops are experiencing moisture stress and have wilted, although they are not yet a write-off. But if the situation persists for a week, we will be doomed,” he said.

Chief Mudavanhu Mugabe said the situation in his area would be precarious if the rains did not fall soon.

“The crops have not yet wilted as such, but they are succumbing slowly to moisture stress and the rains are needed like yesterday,” he said.

Chief Mawere of Gutu said the crop situation in his area was dire.

“We need the rains soon if we are to have any hopes of a better harvest. Hunger is stalking us again,” he said.

Last year in Save Valley, Chiredzi, villagers said they were surviving on baobab porridge.

Acute food shortages in the province also saw the Tshangani communities in Masvingo Province suspending their annual mass circumcision rites last year. The ceremony is usually performed in winter.

The World Food Programme (WFP) recently announced that about 1, 5 million Zimbabweans needed urgent food aid due to the famine.

In Chiredzi, WFP gave 22 885 families food rations up to December and said it would increase the number in January to March this year, which is the highest food deficit period.

Masvingo province is susceptible to drought and many communal farmers have been facing food shortages for the past decade, making them perennial candidates for food hand-outs.

The drought has been blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon, which results in high temperatures and low rainfall in most parts of Africa.

Zimbabwe is likely to receive below normal rainfall but Masvingo, Matabeleland and Midlands are likely to be the hardest hit.
According to a weather forecast issued by the Meteorological Services Department of Zimbabwe yesterday, the ongoing dry spell is set to stretch beyond mid-January.

Former Education minister David Coltart last week used social media to urge government to put in place measures to mitigate against the potentially devastating drought.

“Since posting yesterday on the drought situation in Matabeleland, I have driven from Bulawayo to Harare, a route which used to be the agricultural heartland of Zimbabwe,” Coltart wrote on Facebook.

“I now feel that the situation is even more desperate than when I wrote yesterday because there are hardly any crops planted along this entire route. In other words, my fears that this is a problem which extends beyond Matabeleland have been realised.”

The MDC secretary for legal affairs expressed disappointment over the death of commercial agriculture, saying it would compound the effects of the drought.

“Even farms which a few years ago had crops are now lying fallow,” he added.

“The huge irrigation farms between Norton and Harare have mere scatterings of crops; the maize crops — at the end of December — which have been planted are generally pathetic.

“Most were no more than six inches tall, which equates to drastically reduced yields.

“Agricultural experts teach that maize crops need to be planted by the 25th of November to obtain optimal yields — it is clear that even where there are crops they have been planted well after this date.”

He said most farms seized under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme were not being utilised.

“What profoundly shocked me is that many of the farms which have been taken over by Zanu PF chefs, and which up until recently were still being farmed, are also now lying fallow,” Coltart said.

“This would appear to indicate that even those who are well-connected have either run out of money or ideas. This is a national crisis of unprecedented proportions.”

Last week, millers said the country only had 240 000 tonnes of maize left for both human and animal consumption.

Zimbabwe needs about 1,8 million tonnes of maize every year and the collapse of the agriculture sector has seen the country relying more on imports.

E-NCA

31 December 2015

HARARE ‑ The Zimbabwean government is battling to pay the bulk of its civil service as the country’s economy continues to flounder.

In the recent past, the civil service could always expect to be paid salaries on time – with even the prospect of a 13th cheque – but that has not been the case this year.

Finance and economic development minister Patrick Chinamasa this week said: “Treasury advises that the December 2015 salary payment date for the education sector is being moved from December 28, 2015 [Monday], to December 29, 2015 [Tuesday].

“Furthermore, Treasury advises that the December 2015 salary payment date for the rest of the public service is also being moved from December 29, 2015, to January 5, 2015.Treasury sincerely regrets all the inconveniences caused.”

Lately, the taxman, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra), has been coming down hard on companies to remit taxes on time in a bid to secure money to help pay the civil service bill.

Chinamasa told Senate last week that he had ordered all revenue collecting institutions to open accounts with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe by the end of January.

But Zimbabwean teachers have threatened unspecified action in the coming year over the salaries and bonus discords.

The Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) secretary-general John Mlilo said following a meeting they had held with stakeholders last week, that teachers would not be responsible for any actions they take in the coming year, with there being talk of industrial action.

He said uncertainty about the December 2015 bonus pay dates and reluctance by the government to uphold and act on the promise made by President Robert Mugabe that all civil servants would get bonuses were some of the contributing factors to their grievances.

Mlilo said a further aggravation was the intention of government to introduce further deductions in the form of national health schemes and maternity schemes on educators’ meagre earnings, “a thing that has been totally rejected, as the existing meagre incomes cannot sustain any more deductions”.

The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’ Association (ZHDA) described the situation as “a circus”, saying they were greatly saddened by the latest developments.

“The ZDHA maintains that the ill treatment by the employer through uncertain pay dates and violation of contractual obligations is a violation of the labour laws of this country and is also grossly inhumane and insensitive. The shifting of paydays and bonus payment for health workers . . . is a resemblance of the greatest acceptance of failure by the responsible authorities,” ZHDA said.

The association threatened a nationwide strike if their salaries have not been by December 31, saying “No December salary, no 2015 bonus, no free doctor”.

Former Education minister David Coltart has called for Mugabe to cut short his holiday in the Far East and return home “to sort this mess”.

He said Mugabe could not afford to be on holiday while Zimbabwe was burning, with civil servants unpaid and hunger stalking most communities.

During his Independence Day speech in April, Mugabe declared that civil servants would get their bonuses, this barely a week after Chinamasa had said he had suspended the 13th cheque for 2015 and 2016 owing to a liquidity crunch.

“I want to make it clear that the report which was in the newspapers that bonuses were being withdrawn is not government policy,” Mugabe said back then.

“The Cabinet did not approve that at all and the Presidency was never consulted on the matter. We were never consulted the three of us, that is myself and the two Vice-Presidents [Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko] and we say that is disgusting to us and it will never be implemented at all.”

Chinamasa is now currently under pressure to raise the money.

Reports suggest public service minister Prisca Mupfumira has since clashed with the Treasury chief, following the shifting of payment dates.

Mupfumira has also said there was nothing as yet to brief the Apex Council ‑ the civil service umbrella body ‑ because “the government does not have the money [to pay]”.

Financial Gazette

23 December 2015

HARARE-ZIMBABWE’S government is looking at ways of easing the country’s cash crunch, President Robert Mugabe has said, as the central bank chief denied rumours that the Zimbabwe dollar was about to be reintroduced.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe chief John Mangudya were “looking at… strategies of reforming the banking sector and injecting liquidity in the market”, Mugabe told mourners at a state funeral on Tuesday.

He singled out a decision to encourage the use of the Chinese yuan in Zimbabwe, announced at the weekend, as a “new possibility for us”.Authorities announced they would accept the yuan as legal tender in January last year. It was however almost never seen in shops or on the streets.

Messages circulating on social media platforms said Mugabe’s cabinet had approved the return of the Zimbabwe dollar in the form of “bond notes” and “bond coins.”

Mangudya told a local daily newspaper that the claims were unfounded and that the reintroduction of the local unit would cause panic. He refuted claims that pension payments would be made in never-before-seen “bond notes” on Wednesday.

“In fact pensioners received their payments in US dollars yesterday,” he said.

The fear was that “bond notes”, if introduced, would resemble Zimbabwe’s much-maligned “bearer cheques”, printed in denominations of millions, billions, and trillions during the economic crisis.
“Bond coins”, all with a value of less than US1, were introduced last year in a bid to ease shortages of small change.

Former education minister David Coltart tweeted Tuesday: “As destructive as many of Zanu-PF’s polices are, even they know how catastrophic any attempt to introduce a worthless currency would be.”
Zimbabwean consumers and retailers used to favour rand coins over bond coins. Following the fall in the value of the rand this year, many shops reject them and individuals do not want them either.

IOL – Independent Foreign Service

17th December 2015

Bulawayo – Thousands of old people are sleeping outside banks in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, hoping they will be paid their November pension cheques this week.

Many of them say they remember the hyperinflationery period in 2008 when banks had no money before the government abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar.

But this time it is different.

The government has no US dollars, which it has used since it abandoned the domestic currency, to deposit in banks to pay pensions.

It cannot pay civil servants their 13th cheque and some teachers say they fear they will not get their December salary until after Christmas.

Even the security forces have not yet received their annual bonus, according to public service minister Prisca Mupfumira, who told the Daily News in Harare this week that the uniformed services were supposed to receive their bonus’s last month, but had not been paid because of a lack of funds.

“So far we have not received information from Treasury that cash inflows have improved,” she said.

The government wage bill eats up about 82% of revenue, according to official statistics.

Some of the pensioners sleeping in the streets, many of them former teachers, say they now have no money to go home.

“We are sleeping in queues like refugees,” Khalani Moyo told The Chronicle newspaper this week. “Now I am stuck in town with no money to get home.”

David Coltart, former education minister in the inclusive government which ended two years ago, said: “How does (finance minister Patrick) Chinamasa and the entire Zanu-PF cabinet think pensioners will survive if they don’t receive their miserly pensions?”

Referring to last week’s Zanu-PF conference at Victoria Falls, Coltart tweeted: “Only an utterly callous government would hold a lavish conference in Victoria Falls and yet not pay its pensioners their due.”

Some teachers in Harare said they didn’t expect they would be paid their salaries, let alone bonuses, before Christmas.

“We don’t know officially, but we hear from people in the salaries department that we are only going to get paid our salaries after Christmas. And we now believe we will never get the bonus,” said a primary school teacher from a poor Harare suburb, which has been without water for the past week.

Radio VOP

17th December 2015

HARARE, December 17, 2015 – President Robert Mugabe’s administration has literally stolen Christmas from pensioners amid revelations the government has no cash for pensions and promised bonuses for all servants less than two weeks to Xmas.

Reports have been awash this week pensioners have been spending sleepless nights in banking queues in desperate attempts to withdraw their monthly pay-outs some as little as $60. The failure to pay the pensioners, and to a larger extent civil servants bonuses, is largely blamed on a severe liquidity crunch as the administration is technically broke.

While pensioners have been singing the blues for the past few months, the situation is different with public servants whose leaders accuse Mugabe of failing to deliver on his promise.

Mid this year Mugabe promised to pay the civil servants the 13th cheque despite indications by finance minister Patrick Chinamasa that the Zanu PF administration had no financial wherewithal to make the payments. But less than a week to Christmas Day, pensioners and civil servants are singing the blues. Critics note that it is painful for senior citizens some who have to travel several kilometres to withdraw the meagre pay-outs.

Maxwell Saungweme, a development expert, says it is a tragedy pensioners and the generality of the civil service are staring a bleak Christmas due to the failings of Mugabe’s Zanu PF administration.

“We have a government that cares less for the people. Any descent country would care for its elderly, the pensioners who gave their all for their nation. Civil servants are patriotic Zimbabweans who should be paid their dues first before we talk of chef’s foreign trips and Zanu PF congress. We have skewed priorities,” said Saungweme.

David Coltart, a former cabinet minister, lawyer and opposition politicians, believes Zanu PF’s calculation in not paying pensioners is that they are old, dispensable and unlikely to rise up and protest. “Only an utterly callous government would hold a lavish conference in Victoria Falls and yet not pay its pensioners their due. Zimbabweans deserve a better government than the chaotic Zanu PF sham,” said Coltart.

Jacob Mafume, the spokesperson for the Democratic People’s Party, weighed in, saying his party has maintained that Mugabe only cares for his wife and family.

“They used state resources to meet in Victoria Falls and obviously wiped put the pensions. They want to donate clothes to the elderly at rallies after denying them their dues. The money is going to buying donations for the first lady. It is not only callous but criminal robbing people who have worked for years,” said Mafume.

Bhekithemba Mhlanga, a political analyst based in the United Kingdom, however feels while the pensioners and civil servants are being short-changed, they are not publicly voicing their discontent because they are aware the government is broke .

“Secondly they know that their actions will not make a difference. Thirdly, most of them stopped relying on the government long back just like all other Zimbabweans. Lastly they could well be afraid but most likely they just cannot be bothered,” said Mhlanga.

Newsday

15th December 2015

A FEMALE students’ lobby group, Female Students Network Trust (FSNT), has launched a campaign to push the government to enact a sexual harassment policy to curb incidences of sexual harassment at tertiary institutions.

Speaking after winning the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) Outstanding Standing Civil Society Fighting for Human Rights Award in Bulawayo over the weekend, FSNT director Evernice Munando said her association would continue to push the government to ensure that the policy was enacted next year.

Munando said many female students were sexually harassed by their lecturers and often chose to keep quiet for fear of further victimisation.

“We are currently engaging government so that we have a sexual harassment policy before the end of 2016. We met government officials at the national policy legislative conference in September and made our demands known,” Munando said. “We are pushing the government because female students are being sexually harassed by lecturers and non-academic staff. Most students do not report because they fear victimisation, such as being made to fail.”

Munando said a baseline research conducted by her organisation between June and August this year on sexual harassment in tertiary institutions showed that 94% female students were experiencing various forms of sexual harassment and abuse in exchange for favours such as high grades, money, accommodation and food.

At the same event, former Education minister David Coltart, who won the Male Education Rights Activist of the Year Award, urged Zimbabweans to protest against tax levied on imported text books, saying this would have devastating consequences on the education of future generations.

“This will destroy the reading culture of the country. Already, the country has a shortage of textbooks and the new tax will be very dangerous to our education,” Coltart said.