Channel 4 News
5 May 2009
At the start of a new school term in Zimbabwe one teacher cannot even afford to replace her shoes on her wages, writes Helen.
“Government coffers are bare” was the message to school teachers from Education Minister David Coltart. Promises of increases coming (hopefully from the donor community) and the waiving of school fees for the children of teachers, broke the strike threatening the re-opening of schools on Tuesday.
It’s a short term solution in a country running on promises and the good will of an exhausted and impoverished population. Even the promises are cause for much scepticism. Everyone knows that as long as the unity government does not address the fundamental issues of human rights and law order, international aid is not going to be forthcoming.
“Clothes are a luxury,” one teacher told me a few days ago as we talked about whether she would go back to work or not. “How can I stand in the classroom with these talking shoes?” she asked me. The teacher lifted her foot and showed me the sole peeling away from the upper and flapping at every footstep.
A qualified senior school teacher with twenty years experience, the woman said she does not have a car, computer or even a mobile phone and her life has been reduced to survival levels.
“I was thinking of going South to work as a maid for three months,” the teacher told me. It’s something that many of her colleagues have been doing: going to South Africa and working as cleaners, child minders, house workers or cooks in order to earn enough money to survive on for a few months when they come back to Zimbabwe.
All government teachers are earning US$100 a month which is called an “allowance” and an additional Zimbabwe dollar amount which is deposited into local bank accounts.
The Zimbabwe dollar component of the monthly salary is worthless as the local currency has been suspended and there aren’t even any bank notes in circulation anymore. Why the government continues making Zimbabwe dollar payments to civil servants is a complete mystery and an example of the total confusion prevailing at all levels of the country.
Two months ago a normal residential telephone account was the equivalent of US$2, this month it is US$300.
Clothes being a luxury for a teacher is the tip of the iceberg for the crisis situation facing all civil servants. Telephone accounts for April have just come out. The bills are not delivered or posted to customers but instead are dumped in cardboard boxes at the telephone company offices. Not in alphabetical or address order, you have to sort through thousands of bills looking for your name on an account.
Two months ago a normal residential account was the equivalent of US$2, this month it is US$300.
‘That’s more than 3 months of my pay,” the teacher said as we bemoaned the outrageous charges being demanded of residents in the town. Businesses are in an equally perilous state: where they were paying US$50 two months ago, now their accounts are for over US$2,000.
The situation for school children is equally impossible. As I write this blog on the first day of the new school term, two children, perhaps 8 and 10, are sitting in a tree picking guavas at the house next door.
“Hello,” I said to them. “Why aren’t you at school today?”
Giggling and squirming and looking at their feet, the boy finally answered: “no money”. Urban children are required to pay US$50 a term in school fees. Their parents are unemployed.
Zimbabwe is stuck in a chicken and egg situation. Aid is desperately needed but everyone, even struggling teachers, says it must not come until the old leadership stick to the agreements and free the media, restore law and order, restore human rights and share the power.