I am a teacher at a primary school in Umguza district in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province.
My school is situated in the rural areas of the district, where most commercial farms were recently acquired by the government under the controversial, fast-tracked land reform programme.
The school was built in 1982 after the government resettled people in the area under the ‘willing buyer, willing seller” land policy of the time. In those days, all the children came from four villages in the area, the furthest being 10km away.
But the fast-track land reform programme has changed this.
People have been resettled on newly acquired farms, most of which are far away from the original villages. These new ‘villages” are being established in the middle of nowhere. There are no health or education facilities, no sources of clean drinking water, no roads or shops.
Most of these newly resettled people have children of school-going age. These children are faced with the reality of walking up to 15km to school every day.
Absenteeism has taken centre-stage and those children who do manage to get to school usually arrive at about 10am.
The average pass rate at schools in the area has been very unimpressive since 1999.
On adjacent farms where the general populace is made up of poor peasant farmers, satellite schools have been opened. At some of these schools there are only two or three teachers who conduct lessons under trees without any education facilities.
There is absolutely nothing that resembles an environment conducive to learning. The schools are not even registered with the Ministry of Education.
Pupils do not wear uniforms and many go barefoot. Those without shoes are exposed to a bacterial disease common during the rainy season called inandinandi in our local Ndebele language. The children scratch their feet until they become swollen and cracked.
Secondary-school children also face pathetic conditions where they travel distances of between 15km and 20km to get to the nearest school. Some opt to stay in what is locally known as ‘bush boarding houses”, usually a building near the school. Cases of abuse by other children and adults have been reported at such places.
In the past three years there has been a notable decrease in the number of pupils who proceed to Form 1 after completing primary school. For example, in the year 2003 and 2004, only 15 pupils out of a class of 42 proceeded to secondary school from our school. The rest dropped out.
The government’s politicising of the land reform programme has made some parents think that it is better to keep their children at home tilling the land, rather than send them to school.
This scenario has negatively affected teachers as well, since they feel their energy is being wasted on children who drop out of school willy-nilly.
Until the education system is rescued from political posturing in Zimbabwe, standards are sure to be nosediving day by day.