President Robert Mugabe’s government has allowed most of the 46 private schools closed down this week to reopen on Monday after they agreed to slash their fees to official levels to avoid being seized by the government, according to official statements Saturday.
The government-controlled daily Herald published a list of 36 schools which had been been ”cleared” by the education ministry and said pupils could go back to school next week.
Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere had denounced the schools as ”racist” organisations charging high fees to keep out blacks, and gave them until Friday to cut their fees to prescribed levels or be ”nationalised” by the government.
Officials of the Association of Trust Schools (ATS) which represents the country’s about 65 private schools, said heads of all the affected schools had rushed to the education ministry on Friday to meet the deadline, but several had failed, because ministry officials refused to stay at work beyond the 4.30pm office hours.
Police, many with automatic rifles, manned the gates of the private schools from Monday, barring pupils, staff and parents entry. At least 12 heads and school board governors were arrested, some of them forced to spend the night in police cells.
In an interview on state television on Thursday night, Chigwedere declared that private schools were ”factories to produce white Rhodesians,” and were owned by foreign organisations.
”The ownership is British,” he said. ”It is the very war we are fighting against these schools,” he said.
Chigwedere also told a group of anxious parents who met him earlier that ”we are doing to the private schools what we did to the white farms,” a reference to the regime’s illegal seizure since 2 000 of nearly all of the country’s 11-million hectares of productive white-owned land.
Private school authorities have rebutted the allegations, and say all but one of their schools is black-dominated, some by 95%, as are their boards of governors. They also say they are completely locally-owned, and point out that the fee increases at all schools were overwhelmingly approved by the parents.
A circular to private schools issued Friday night by ATS urged all schools to sign ”acceptance certificates” with the ministry agreeing to prescribed fees as ”the fastest way to reopen the schools and avoid them being nationalised by the government.”
It said that the agreement was ”only a short term solution as it leaves many schools technically insolvent” and all schools will now have to look at ways to cut costs.
Education experts say that the state school system is collapsing under an almost total lack of government support, with teachers demoralised, overworked and poorly paid, and classrooms dilapidated. – Sapa-DPA