The Financial Gazette
Financial Gazette Reporter
27 June 2009
WALTER Mzembi, then deputy water resources minister, told the nation last year that the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) was to sink boreholes at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) to end a crippling water situation that has delayed the resumption of learning at the institution.
Nearly a year has passed with no sign that the university would reopen. The water situation has remained critical.
With hindsight, the nation should have been pragmatic. Mzembi’s word should not have been taken seriously.
ZINWA, which Mzembi had pinned his hopes on to untangle the UZ from the water crisis had proved to be a monumental failure right from the day it was assigned by the government to provide water to municipalities against expert advice from engineers who had long pointed out that the authority lacked the capacity to efficiently pipe clean water to households.
And when Zimbabwe was hit by a cholera outbreak in October 2008, long after acute water shortages had surfaced in all the major towns and cities, it then dawned on even the staunchest of ZINWA’s backers that the parastatal had neither the means nor the knowhow to discharge its mandate. By then the water borne disease had claimed more than 4 000 lives.
ZINWA’s dangerous experiment with Harare’s water supplies ended before it could even identify suitable sites for the UZ borehole project.
And last month, Stan Mudenge, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education was on hand to keep the nation’s fading hopes alive. After being taken to task by lawmakers over the university’s failure to reopen, Mudenge revealed that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had come to the university’s rescue by drilling boreholes at the campus to end the water crisis, adding that the institution would be reopened in two weeks’ time.
As of yesterday, the university was still closed.
Mudenge’s word should therefore be treated with guarded optimism more so given that UNICEF has not said a word about the project.
But as government officials continue to pay lip service to this important issue the future of present and future UZ students is in jeopardy.
While David Coltart, the Education Minister, has tried his best to ensure that teachers are back in classes and that schools are reopened, Mudenge and his team have failed the nation as far as the reopening of the university is concerned.
It would appear that all that matters for ZANU-PF, which is in charge of the Higher Education portfolio at the moment, is to have targeted sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union lifted so that its apparatchiks could shop around in New York, London or Oslo.
Tied to that is the party’s obsession with the next elections. Given the warped thinking in some sections of the party, ZANU-PF mandarins would rather go to the next elections with the university’s doors under lock and key since they view the institution as a political hotbed whose offspring are seen as agents of the “regime change agenda”.
Mudenge cannot be bothered about the university’s plight despite the fact that the institution is part of his brief. We doubt if any of his children are studying at the university to warrant his losing sleep over its failure to reopen.
The institution is moribund. Infrastructure at the UZ is in a state of neglect with no sufficient learning material including basics such as chalks and writing paper.
All cafeterias on campus have been closed and the once productive UZ farm which used to provide food for the university is now a pale shadow of its former self.
Vehicles that were procured for field research are grounded. Lecture rooms and halls of residents were long deserted with chairs and beds breaking.
Students have lost an entire academic year. Bored by sitting at home, some of the students might not resist the urge of going into crime, including prostitution to survive the harsh economic conditions.
That some of the students might end up joining the flight of skills to greener pastures or take up full time employment – abandoning their education altogether – cannot be ruled out.
The crisis at the university is not just costing students. Parents are also anxious – worried about the future of their children.
The whole country is also paying a huge price for it. The university will not be able to enroll the next intake until it creates space by removing the stops stalling the upward mobility within its system.
What this means is that the UZ can not play its pivotal role of feeding industry and commerce with graduates until the challenges have been overcome; all this at precisely the moment when it must play an active role in replacing skills lost through the brain drain.
Government’s failure to address the challenges at the university demonstrates its lack of seriousness about the revival of the education sector in Zimbabwe. That the MDC has remained quiet about it does not reflect well on its leadership as well.
The UZ is not just another institution of higher learning. It is the oldest and biggest university in Zimbabwe, which has been a source of pride for the country for many years.
A slump in standards at the institution is therefore reflective of more pressing problems across the education sector.
While there is nothing new about how the government is approaching the whole thing, there is every reason for the nation to feel let down by the private sector and the civic society. Where is the private sector in all this? Why can’t private companies emulate the example set by Lobel’s Bread, which recently launched a three million rand scholastic promotion to help rebuild confidence in the country’s education sector?
A holistic approach, this time spearheaded by the private sector and the civic society, is required to deal with the crisis at the UZ. Providing water is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
The solution to the conundrum should be able to cut across the whole spectrum of the university’s operations i.e. salaries for lecturers and support staff, their working conditions, the provision of learning material and equipment to students, their upkeep and implementing a viable fee structure that will achieve the twin objective of making the university self sustaining while being affordable.
A piecemeal approach to the situation at the UZ will mean that students will always be up in arm with government while teachers will spend more time in the streets than in lecture rooms, pressing for better pay.