Crisis on the curriculum in Zimbabwe

Once hailed as the pride of Africa, Zimbabwe’s education system has been engulfed from top to bottom by the country’s political and economic crisis.

The University of Zimbabwe, once the prestigious pinnacle of the system, is now finding it almost impossible to keep functioning. Meanwhile, in schools teachers have been beaten, forced to attend ‘re-education camps” and killed, according to union officials. Students of all ages are sent home if they cannot pay fees or don’t have proper uniforms. Education budgets have been dropping for more than 10 years. Teachers’ meagre salaries have lagged far behind the country’s 269% inflation.

This is a far cry from the days in the 1980s when President Robert Mugabe’s government made education its first priority. Zimbabwe’s teachers were respected and relatively well remunerated. Primary education was nearly free and secondary education was within the reach of almost everyone, in both urban and rural areas. The country achieved impressive literacy rates, first of 80% and then above 90%, making Zimbabwe’s education system one of the most effective in Africa and one of the best in the developing world.

But the education system, from primary school up through university, has suffered 10 years of decline and since 2000 has been one of the main victims of the country’s economic chaos and political repression.

‘I worked hard to qualify as a teacher and I was honoured in my community,” said Tendai M, a veteran of Mugabe’s liberation forces, who studied to become a teacher after independence in 1980. ‘I got a good education but I am not satisfied with the schooling my children are receiving.”

A hard-working mathematics teacher, who does not want to be named for fear of retribution, was appointed headteacher of his government boarding school two years ago. ‘I thought things would get better, but being a headmaster has been a nightmare,” he said. ‘With food shortages and inflation we do not have enough money to get enough to eat. I am constantly searching for food and begging for charity. We try to keep our classes going, but it is very, very difficult.”

Zimbabwe’s education system has been one of the many casualties of the country’s multiplying troubles, according to Brian Raftopoulos, chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, who spoke at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies earlier this year.

‘After 2000, in the context of the more general political crisis, a whole series of highly politicised problems emerged in the educational sphere,” said Raftopoulos. ‘These problems have centred around: the ‘disciplining’ of teachers for their support for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC); the militarisation of youth centres; the struggle by teachers for better conditions of service in a rapidly declining economy; and struggles over the curriculum, in particular the teaching of history.”

Raftopoulos said that about 15% of Zimbabwean children remained out of school in 2000 and a high number of those were girls.

The country’s spiralling economic crisis has caused many more children to stop going to school because their parents cannot afford the rising fees and the cost of uniforms and books.

‘This problem of dropouts is directly related to the general problem of poverty,” said Raftopoulos. ‘In a poverty assessment study survey carried out by the United Nations Development Programme, it was found that 61% of Zimbabweans were classified as poor in 1997, rising to 73% in 2003. With more specific references to dropouts, a study of social policy under structural adjustment conditions in Zimbabwe carried out in 1997/98 found that the major reason for children dropping out of school was unaffordability.”

The cost of maintaining Zimbabwe’s education system is high. Relative to comparable countries in the Southern African region, Zimbabwe spends an unusually high share of national income on education.

Ironically, Mugabe’s success over the past 20 years in educating large numbers of Zimbabweans has added to his troubles in recent years. The vast majority of young Zimbabweans are educated, but they cannot find jobs. This has created a huge well of discontent among the articulate youth.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe has documented the intimidation, harassment, detention, arrests, torture and the unprecedented unleashing of state security agents on the schools. As a result of the assaults by state agencies, the union reported that between the period 2000 to 2002 five teachers were killed, 119 raped and ‘many more were maimed, kidnapped, tortured and displaced”.

In addition, many teachers and students have been forced to attend ‘re-education camps’ where lessons centre on a narrow party-oriented history of Zimbabwe, including the formation of the ruling party, Zanu-PF, its military struggle against white-minority Rhodesia and why the party deserves to remain in power.

‘Certainly, state violence against teachers and the narrow nationalist approach to the teaching of ‘patriotic history’ are a long way from the tone of tolerance urged by the Education Commission before the political crisis began in 2000,” said Raftopoulos.

The violence and economic difficulties that have confronted Zimbabwe’s education system in recent years illustrate how deeply the ongoing political and economic crisis has reached into all sectors of the country.

Yet Raftopoulos and other education specialists believe that the country’s schools can rebound and return to a positive position if Zimbabwe can pull out of the crisis through a peaceful, negotiated process of transition that will lead the country to a fresh round of thoroughly free and fair elections.

‘The damage to education is severe, but it does not have to be permanent,” concluded Raftopoulos. ‘The restoration of democracy will see Zimbabwe enter a period of reconciliation in which education can once again return to a place of priority. Students will once again have the opportunity to learn.”

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