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(Richard Mills/The Times)
A boy heads home from school as Zimbabwe’s new school term begins. Thousands of teachers stayed away
was May Day and the schools were out for the holiday but Tatenda Makura had come to St Peter’s Secondary School anyway, looking for the headmaster. He joined the queue of other boys in the corridor, hoping to win a place at the sought-after church school. “This is the only one that has enough teachers,” Tatenda explained.
When the new term began this week at his own school, Harare High, only two out of eight of his teachers turned up. “Maths, science, geography, accounts, history,” the earnest 17-year-old reeled off — “we are not getting any of these. I need to learn these but the teachers are not there.”
As Zimbabwe’s new school term began after a six-week election break, thousands of teachers failed to turn up, kept away by violence, intimidation or simply poverty caused by the hyperinflation that has soared even higher since March’s disputed elections.
Teachers’ unions declared that 9,000 teachers failed to report for work on Tuesday, exacerbating the woes of an education system already crippled by a national brain drain and chronic underfunding,
Hundreds of rural schools are struggling to reopen at all after teachers fled a campaign of violence against local activists for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and officers for the Zimbabwe election commission. Thousands of teachers took employment as election officers during the school break to supplement their shrinking incomes. In the past week at least 100 teachers, including several school principals, have been arrested on suspicion of electoral fraud.
The main trade union federation announced yesterday that two teachers had been beaten to death at their school in the northwestern Guruve region, apparently by ruling party militia. “These are being accused of rigging the elections in favour
of MDC,” Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, said.
Others who worked as presiding officers have been the subject of violence from militias terrorising the Opposition in rural strongholds, such as Mudzi and Mutoko, where schools have been hit hardest.
Arthur, a secondary school English teacher, was asleep at home in Kumburai village, Mudzi, two weeks ago when 40 Zanu (PF) militiamen smashed into his home. “They asked me: ‘Where are your colleagues?’ I said I didn’t know and they began to beat me. They said: ‘If you don’t tell us, we will kill you.’ ” He fled to Harare with two other teachers for medical treatment. One of them, Harold, was tortured for seven hours before he escaped. All are in hiding.
“Hate speeches are being uttered against teachers. Some are being systematically assaulted,” Mr Majongwe said. “There is no way that they can go back to such dangerous areas.”
Tatenda has little idea why his teachers did not turn up at the start of term. He has seen dozens leave for other countries and two die “from tuberculosis” — most likely Aids-
related — over the past five years. St Peter’s has been less affected than some other schools: teachers say the faith-based ethos has kept them loyal to the profession despite their own crushing economic needs.
Joseph Magorimbo, 18, had arrived from Kwekwe, 100km (60 miles) southwest of Harare, to seek a place at St Peter’s, after a handful of teachers turned up at his own school the start of term. His mother was a teacher there but she died four years ago from Aids. “My granny brought me up here because she said my mother would want me to have an education above anything,” he said.
Education is highly prized in Zimbabwe, not least because of President Mugabe, a former teacher himself, who prioritised school building and teacher training in the early years of his rule. Every morning, from the slums of Mbare, children emerge in a rainbow of coloured uniforms, heading off to lessons.
“Even if the uniforms are torn, they all have them,” Lucy, a secondary teacher, said. “The parents make sure of that.” She did not return to work this week because she can no longer survive on her salary, Z$5 billion a month, shrinking every day through hyperinflation at 165,000 per cent.
The schools themselves are struggling too, and not just from lack of teachers. At St Peter’s, as the prospective pupils waited, a parent-teacher committee had given up a day’s holiday to hammer out a rise in school fees. Last term they were Z$80 million; they had done their sums and worked out that this term would need
Z$4 billion per pupil just to keep running. “This school is a good
one and even it is nearly bankrupt,” Gilbert Musintonga, a teacher from the primary department, said. But this will put a severe strain on parents struggling to pay off last term’s debts. “That is the situation,” Grace, a committee member shrugged. “They will try their best because they want education for their children. Without education, they can do nothing. Some will refuse. It will be tough for them.”
The Government, anxious to keep up appearances, has stuffed schools full of relief teachers, unqualified for the job, so even when they do show up the teaching is a far removed from what it used to be. Zimbabwe’s trained teachers, meanwhile, wait in their thousands on the restaurant tables of Johannesburg and elsewhere.
“I am worried for the future of these children,” Mr Musintonga sighed. “We don’t have books, we don’t have equipment, we don’t even have chalk. We only have our teachers but without them, the children cannot learn anything. This term, we have five classes without teachers and we don’t know where they are, or whether they will come back.”
The poor children
1.7m Zimbabwean children are orphans, the highest per capita figure in the world
30% of children in rural areas suffer from malnutrition
160,000 children under 14 have HIV
50% of Zimbabwe’s population are under the age of 18
105 children out of every 1,000 die before their fifth birthday — up from 76 15 years earlier
Sources: Unicef, Save the Children
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