The Standard
By NDAMU SANDU
5 April 2009

MDC-T MPs will soon convene a caucus to consider an offer of cars from the central bank, amid warnings from political parties that such a move would compromise the independence of Parliament.

On Thursday Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono played “Father Christmas” by offering the central bank’s cars to legislators for use in their day-to-day work.

Gono said the cars would be returned after the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, found money to buy cars for legislators.

MDC-T Chief Whip, Innocent Gonese said the party was still to “meet as a caucus to consider the proposal to have cars from RBZ”.

Gonese, however, said some legislators were facing difficulties in travelling to their constituencies as they do not have personal cars and the allowances they receive are inadequate to buy vehicles.

MPs, like all civil servants, get an allowance of US$100. Gonese said legislators had not been receiving their transport allowances last year. In the period from August to November, he said, they received allowances in Zimbabwean dollars – inadequate to meet their daily needs.

Travel allowances were also paid in local currency at US$0.30-US$0.35 a kilometre, calculated at the official bank rate. They did not get sitting allowances, Gonese said.

But Senator David Coltart, the Minister of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture and a senior member in the MDC-M warned yesterday MPs should not accept the cars as such a move would compromise the independence of legislators.

“I believe it will compromise the independence of legislators,” Coltart, a lawyer, said. “I don’t believe the Reserve Bank should be involved in handing out vehicles to anyone. The Parliamentary vehicle scheme is the appropriate way.

“Unfortunately this is another example of quasi-fiscal expenditure which we are trying to run away from. We should not encourage that.”

Told that the vehicles had been bought for other purposes, Coltart said the cars should have been sold and the money used to supplement scarce resources in our budget.

Coltart said he would not accept the RBZ offer.

“No, I will not accept a vehicle from the Reserve Bank. It is a time of financial constraints and we have to tighten our belts,” he said.

Coltart declined a ministerial Mercedes Benz vehicle and opted for a Nissan 4×4 saying his job requires visiting rural areas which would not be compatible with the Benz.

Retired Major Kudzai Mbudzi, head of National Mobilisation in the Mavambo formation accused the central bank of engaging in “quasi-political activities” which would compromise the independence of Parliament.

“These are the quasi-political activities of the Reserve Bank. These are the same cars that were given to soldiers to campaign for Zanu PF,” Mbudzi said.

Mbudzi said RBZ was trying to curry favours with legislators. On Thursday Gono said the offer of cars was not meant to bribe MPs but was a realisation that legislators needed transport to move around their constituencies.

He boasted that RBZ interventions had resulted in some legislators retaining their constituencies.
The majority of the legislators murmured disapprovals as Gono made his presentation only to applaud when Gono dangled the cars.

Mbudzi said the fact that some legislators applauded the offer of cars showed that they “are into power to remove their poverty”.

Political analysts questioned Gono’s motive, adding that the move would weaken Parliament’s watchdog role.

Ironically, Parliament on Wednesday is supposed to debate the alleged unauthorised use of Africa University foreign currency by the central bank, resulting in the stalling of projects at the university.
“It compromises the independence, autonomy and capacity of Parliament to act as watchdog of RBZ and its structures,” said Professor Eldred Masunungure, the director of the Mass Public Opinion Institute.

“This is all part of Zanu PF way of doing things anchored on patronage-driven behaviour,” Masunungure said.

Masunungure said Gono was marginalised in the past few weeks by the ministry of Finance and he was trying to carve some space for himself.

He said a number of legislators were suffering and were susceptible to this incentive.

“MPs have been agitating for these vehicles and with Tendai Biti saying the coffers are empty, Gono is trying to lure the Parliamentarians to his side,” Masunungure said.
“This is a fight back by Gono on the individual level and the Reserve Bank as the institution but this is more to do with the former rather than the latter.”

In his address to legislators on Thursday, Gono said central bank’s interventions had benefited all sectors of the economy but Masunungure disagreed.

“Who in the civil society benefited,” he asked.

Non-Governmental Organisations spent the better part of last year besieging RBZ after the central had raided their foreign currency accounts.

Law expert Dr Lovemore Madhuku said Gono was trying to legitimise his quasi-fiscal operations by dishing out cars to legislators. He was quick to add that the issue was not about the central bank governor but the principals.

“Why have principals kept quiet about the outstanding issues? Why has the issue of Gono not been resolved? Why is Gono confident of coming out of his hiding,” Madhuku asked.

Gono’s position together with that of Attorney-General Johannes Tomana was the subject for discussion when the three principals – President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara – joined forces to form an inclusive government in February.
Gono told legislators that his actions were above board and in line with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act.

The Standard
By EDGAR GWESHE
5 April 2009

STAFFING levels in the country’s education sector remain low despite a government directive that teachers who had left the profession should be reinstated to curtail staff shortages, The Standard has learnt.
The government in February issued a directive that teachers who had left the profession between January 2007 and March 2009 could be reinstated in their respective stations.

However teachers’ representative bodies last week said that despite the directive some schools still experienced serious staff shortages.

Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) secretary-general Richard Gundani said 35% of the posts in primary schools across the country were still vacant, while in secondary schools the figure was 33%.

“There have been quite a number of hiccups in the reinstatement of teachers who had left the profession.
The interpretation of the policy document is being misunderstood by some education authorities who seem to be vindictive on teachers,” Gundani said.

He, however, said the most affected schools were in Matabeleland, which shares borders with South Africa and Botswana.

“In provinces like Matabeleland South and North, there are still some schools where you can only find a school head and a few remaining teachers,” he said.

The Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) estimates that an average of four teachers at each school left the profession in 2008, translating to about 30 000 teachers countrywide.

Zimbabwe has lost close to 70 000 teachers in the past years creating a huge teacher deficit.

The Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture says that a third of vacant posts still remain unfilled.

Senator David Coltart, the Minister of Education, said there was a “huge staff deficit” and he had received reports the reinstatement process was being frustrated.

“We continue to receive reports that the process is being frustrated and I am taking measures to make sure the process is respectable,” he said.

Coltart vowed to take action against “unruly elements” bent on retarding progress on the reinstatement of teachers.

Gundani said Zimta had asked the Ministry of Education to repeal a section in the policy document on reinstatement that says teachers will be readmitted initially for a period of one year after which an assessment will be carried out to determine their full reinstatement.

“We had to challenge that section because we feel it will not attract teachers back into the country, the conditions for readmission should not be so stringent,” Gundani said.

The PTUZ programmes and communication officer, Oswald Madziva, said many teachers who had applied for reinstatement were still waiting for approval.

“The process is too centralised and quite a number of teachers who had applied for readmission are still waiting to get a confirmation from the ministry,” he said.

Madziva also said some headmasters, and provincial and district education officers were frustrating the reinstatement of teachers.

“We had a case at Morgan High School, where a teacher was supposed to come through an amnesty but the head went on to abolish the subject (Office Practice) from the curriculum. The problem seems to be that some school heads are taking advantage of the situation to settle personal scores with teachers.”

The Guardian
By Maurice Gerard in Harare
Saturday 4 April 2009

Zimbabwe’s new unity government has sparked public outcry by accepting a succession of perks including a “retreat” to a luxury resort at Victoria Falls this weekend and a fleet of $50,000 Mercedes vehicles for ministers while the vast majority struggles to afford basic commodities.

The perception of officials feathering their nests is particularly awkward for former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his allies in the unity government, who spent years championing the lot of ordinary Zimbabweans during the economic collapse presided over by Robert Mugabe. It is also likely to raise questions about the government’s spending priorities, coming just days after it issued an appeal for billions of dollars.

Officially billed as a brainstorming session on how to take the country forward, the weekend retreat will take place at a tourist resort famed for its five-star safari lodges and the spectacular “Mosi-I-Tunya” waterfalls, the “smoke that thunders” in the local Shona language. Many Zimbabweans see the trip as another junket for the politically privileged.

“It’s just spitting in peoples’ faces at a time when the cities are suffering and much of the countryside is starving,” said Dumisani Moyo, 39, an office worker in the capital Harare.

The government has been quoted as saying the retreat will promote tourism, particularly as most foreign visitors have forsaken Zimbabwe for Zambia’s side of the falls. But criticism came from the most unlikely of sources: the slavishly pro-president Mugabe state-owned Herald daily newspaper. In a rare show of dissent its political editor Mabasa Sasa wrote a column earlier this week asking why politicians needed to spend “untold sums” of precious foreign exchange to wine, dine and talk on the peoples’ behalf when they could stay in the capital Harare.

Satirising the bon viveur politicians’ new taste for luxury in a rebuke all the more stinging for its unexpectedness, Sasa said: “It would be interesting to find out how high the bar tab will be considering the penchant for Chivas Regal and other exotically named whiskies and cognacs that people acquire when someone starts addressing them as Shefu [chief]”.

Barely seven weeks ago many of the ministers expected to attend were in opposition fighting for their political lives or facing the truncheons of president Robert Mugabe’s security services.

But the excursion is the culmination of a series of perks. These include the new government’s self-award of one Mercedes-Benz E-class for every minister at a time when most Zimbabweans are struggling to afford basic commodities such as cooking oil and the national maize staple mealie-meal.

Only one politician, MDC MP and minister for education David Coltart, refused the Benz. He said a Mercedes was not practical for negotiating the potholed roads of rural constituencies.

Zimbabwe’s economic and financial needs meanwhile remain critical. The regional Southern African Development Community announced this week that it would assist Zimbabwe in trying to raise up to US$8.3bn to rebuild its shattered economy.

The reforming MDC finance minister Tendai Biti said the country urgently needed US$2bn in aid inflows within the next two weeks to meet its debt obligations and pay civil servants.

Important, if modest, economic and political reforms have already taken place under the combined auspices of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and their one-time enemies the Movement for Democratic change. But there are also deep misgivings. Christopher Goche, 35, a taxi driver and MDC supporter, said he was worried that politicians were “feathering their nests when there is a long way to go”.

Despite the national outpouring of sympathy for prime minister Tsvangirai, whose wife died in a car accident last month, there are fears that the former trade unionist is becoming co-opted by Mugabe much like one-time opposition leader Joshua Nkomo was in the 1980s.

Nkomo, once the president’s most popular rival, was incorporated into a Mugabe-led government under Zimbabwe’s “unity accord” in 1987.

“For the moment things are stable but one can’t mistake growing disenchantment with the new unity government barely a month after its inception … Tsvangirai is operating under a shadow of Nkomo,” said Dr Ibbo Mandaza, a former Zanu-PF politician and Harare-based analyst.

The Zimbabwean
4 April 2009

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s cash-strapped government said last week that it hadrun out of funds to complete marking of public school examinationswritten last year and whose results should have been out several weeksago.

Education Minister David Coltart told a meeting of the education sectorin Harare that results that should have been announced at the end ofthis month had been postponed to a later date while the governmentscrounges for cash to compete the marking of Ordinary and AdvancedLevel examinations.

“Marking of the papers is complete but there is no sufficient money tocontinue the exercise,” Coltart told delegates who also includedrepresentatives of several international aid organisations.

The results are traditionally announced by the end of February.

Coltart said his ministry was looking for more funds from donors tocomplete the marking to complement ongoing government efforts to sourcefunds from through the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The failure to process public school examinations highlights the rot inZimbabwe’s once envied educations system after 10 years ofunder-funding and mismanagement.

Classrooms have crumbled, textbooks are in short supply, while a severebrain drain that has seen thousands of teachers and other professionalssuch as bankers, lawyers, doctors and engineers fleeing Zimbabwe to goabroad where remuneration and living conditions are better has leftschools badly understaffed.

Teachers agreed to return to work after months on strike and to startmarking the examinations only after the new power-sharing governmentbetween President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangiraiagreed to pay all civil servants allowances of US$100 each per month.

Markers are also being paid in hard cash. But with production at eitherstandstill or well below capacity across all sectors of the economy,the government is fast running out of cash for allowances and for otherkey functions.

A SADC summit on Monday agreed to help raise US$10 billion from the international community to bankroll Zimbabwe’s recovery.

But rich Western governments with capacity to fund the unity governmenthave refused to provide support until they see evidence Mugabe iscommitted to genuine power sharing and to implementing comprehensivepolitical and economic reforms.

The Zimbabwean
3 April 2009

Schools will be closing this week after slightly more than one month of uninterrupted learning for our children. Notwithstanding a shortage of drugs, hospitals and clinics are open as nurses and doctors try to provide a service to the sick.

Other government departments, slowly, have started to function again as clerks, journeymen, drivers and all kinds of civil servants respond to the call by the new government to return to their workstations and get Zimbabwe running again.

We hope the lesson is not lost on those who have played Lord over us all these years, President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) party – that honesty is not only good morals, it is also good business!

Civil servants still earn a pittance. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe puts the cost of basic goods and services per month for an average family of six people at above US$370, more than three times the US$100 allowance that every government worker receives per month.

Immediately after his appointment, Education Minister David Coltart met striking teachers and openly told them that the government was broke. That he would need time to approach aid agencies for help to pay them, but that until such a time more funds were secured teachers would have to call off their strike and return to classrooms in the interests of the children – the future of our nation.

Coltart did not threaten to send the CIO after the leaders of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) and the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) if they did not call off the strike. He did not opt for cheap blackmail against teachers by accusing them of being sellouts on the pay of Britain in its plot to re-colonise Zimbabwe.

Coltart merely told the truth and it worked!

Likewise, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Finance Minister Tendai Biti have been open with civil servants and all Zimbabweans, readily admitting to the sorry state of government finances.

This openness has helped to inspire a nation to make more sacrifices in the hope that tomorrow will be better than today. And we hope that as Mugabe and company learn anew what a little honest can achieve, Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and their MDC formations are also taking note of the lessons of this moment in our country’s history.

For it is easier now to be generous with the truth because it is Zanu (PF) that will get blamed. But we know that the longer Tsvangirai and his team spend aboard the gravy train the greater will be the temptation to be economic with the truth, massage it, deny it or as the past few years have shown us, kill and persecute those who insist on telling the truth.

We do not seek a government of angels. We merely seek a government of honest men and women who may make mistakes, but who we can always say we know where they stand on matters that affect our interests as a people.

Zimbabwe Times
By Raymond Maingire
3 April 2009

HARARE – The government is under pressure to do away with this year’s June examinations following its continued failure to complete the marking of last year’s June and November public examinations due to a crippling strike by teachers over salaries.

Education, Arts, Sport and Culture minister, David Coltart told parliamentarians Wednesday that his ministry may consider jettisoning the June examinations.

He said government was still struggling to source funds to finance the staging of the examinations.
Coltart said his ministry had been inundated with calls from stakeholders who felt the June exams should be dropped to allow government to deal with those exams still outstanding.

He was responding to a question by Zaka Central legislator Harrison Mudzuri who asked what government was planning to do with regard to the June 2009 examinations.

Coltart said his ministry was recently given US$867 000 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to finance the marking of the June and November 2008 exams.

He said the marking of the outstanding examination papers was now 99 percent complete.
“We have made substantial progress in that regard,” said Coltart.

“We have almost completed marking every single paper except for geography. Ninety nine percent of the papers are now complete.”

The process, said Coltart, was being delayed by the collating, upgrading and the capturing of the results into a database. He said the exam results could be out by the end of the next schools holiday.
Coltart, who is the Senator for Khumalo Constituency said a total of up to US$438 million was required within the next five months to restore stability to the education sector, once among the best in Africa.
He said this year’s budget allocation to the ministry was not sufficient to restore stability to the embattled sector in the short term.

In the absence of viable salaries paid to Zimbabwean teachers, Coltart said, his ministry was hamstrung in disciplining schools and teachers that demanded payment from parents outside the official fee structure.

“We will continue experiencing these ad hoc payment systems for as long as we are not able to pay viable salaries to teachers,” he said.

“This is going to take quite some time to stop. We can only start employing vigorous disciplinary measures against school heads and teachers once we start paying viable salaries to teachers.”
Minister Coltart was responding to a question by Muzarabani South legislator, Edward Raradza who asked if government was aware some rural schools were demanding goats, chicken and even cattle as supplementary payment for teachers.

Like all civil servants in Zimbabwe, teachers are paid a monthly allowance of US$100, which is not enough for their subsistence.

Coltart defended his ministry’s decision to exempt rural pupils from paying school fees saying part of the higher fees being charged on low density schools in urban areas, including monies sourced from the treasury would be channeled towards the upkeep of rural schools.

Coltart was also responding to concerns by the parliamentarians who felt the decision to drop tuition fees for rural primary schools would, in the long run, impact negatively on the development of primary schools in rural areas.

The Times
By Jan Raath
3 April 2009

All but one of Zimbabwe’s ministers from the former opposition has accepted an official Mercedes Benz.
When they were in opposition MDC politicians condemned the profligacy of Mr Mugabe’s Mercedes Benz-mobilised Zanu(PF) party.

Last September, when the agreement to form a power-sharing Government was signed, senior MDC figures made an informal decision never to accept an official Mercedes.
But it has now emerged that all but one of the 20 new ministers, including Morgan Tsvangirai and his two deputy prime ministers, is now making use of a $50,000 E280 model.

Eric Matinenga, a prominent human rights advocate and now Constitutional Affairs Minister, said he was “embarrassed” at his official Mercedes.

“It is a condition of plenty amidst deprivation,” he said. “But the reality on the ground is there there is no other. You cannot get an alternative — they become a convenient evil.”

Another minister who asked not to be named was surprised with the alacrity with which they were offered their limousines. “There was so much pressure on me to go and get it. I argued with them for a long time,” he said.

“Why were they so keen to give me a fancy car that I didn’t want? It really looked like they wanted to tar us with their own dirty brush.”

David Coltart, the new Education Minister, told The Times that he had not been in his office for 30 minutes on his first day in the job when a transport officer burst in and told him to hurry down to the government vehicle pool to collect his new Mercedes Benz.

“He said if didn’t come down now, someone else would get it,” he said.

“I had just come into a building with no running water and I was being offered a Mercedes Benz. It was astonishing.”

It was much the same for the rest of the 20 cabinet ministers of the two MDC factions on their first day at work — each told they now had a luxurious, three-litre official Mercedes E280 available to them
Mr Coltart, from the splinter faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was alone in declining the use of the car.

The Mercedes Benz has long been the symbol of sleaze and rapacity among Zimbabwe’s ruling elite under President Mugabe, who proclaims his supremacy with a $500,000 bombproof model S600L. As with the parasitic waBenzi class in most of Africa, they bled the country’s treasury to be able to roar down potholed roads and past ordinary people deprived of food, homes, medicine and education.
“The thing about driving a Merc is that it is not just a different car — it is a different planet. How can you be in touch with the people in a Mercedes?” once senior MDC official, now a minister, asked at the time.

Now the MDC has a dilemma, faced with being tainted as just more of the same waBenzi clique. Some officials claim it is a deliberate tactic by Mr Mugabe’s bureaucrats to offload spare Mercedes limousines on to MDC ministers and slowly “break the mould” of the factions’ image of incorruptibility.

According to Tendai Biti, the MDC Finance Minister, the cars were bought by the Central Bank a year ago but never distributed — “I have not bought any cars for anyone,” he said. “We either had to leave them to rot or sell them, and get half their value. It was cheaper to keep them. It was a matter of practicality.”

Of the Mercedes allocated to him, he said, “I don’t like it. Half the time I use a truck.”

There are other reasons to keep the cars: the state will only provide fuel, maintenance and official registration to the Mercs and not to ministers’ private cars. And with an official salary of $100 a month — the same as all ranks in the civil service — and a housing allowance paid in worthless Zimbabwean dollars, such costs are considerable.

Mr Coltart, who uses a Nissan Pathfinder 4X4, which he claims is cheaper to run and will get him to schools on appalling rural roads, said: “I made a pact in 2006 never to be seen in one.”

ZimEye.org
April 2, 2009

Harare (ZimEye) – The cash-strapped government has given 39 ministers poshy cars – Mercedes Benz at a time the country is facing a deepening economic crisis.

The Ministers received the cars last month and are enjoying the luxuries associated with driving the Mercedes Benz at the expense of ordinary Zimbabweans who are starving to death.

Government officials told the ZimEye that the ministers were given sparkling Mercedes Benz E280, valued at close to R1 million.

Only Minister of Education, Sport, Art and Culture David Coltart refused to drive a Mercedes Benz but opted for a Nissan Pathfinder.

Coltart confirmed that he rejected the vehicle because his ministry was one of the poorest, thus it would portray a wrong perception.

He said the money that bought the flashy Mercedes Benz could have been used to import food and meet the high demand of maize meal and other basic commodities.

President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed an inclusive government in February.

On Friday, the Ministers are enjoying an economic planning retreat in Victoria Falls where thousands of United States dollars will be spent.

31 March 2009
Sunday News

AFTER making sure that the schools stay open and last year’s public examinations results are released, the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture will turn to the restocking of schools with textbooks, the minister, Senator David Coltart, has said.

Speaking at a function to award prizes to pupils who had excelled in an international entrepreneurship programme at Eveline High School in Bulawayo last Friday, the minister said his ministry needed US$90 million to reach the one child to a textbook ratio.

He said that would only be possible with donors and the private sector partnering with government in reviving the education sector.

“There is a need for a partnership between the government and the private sector. The first concern is how we can get business to assist in the provision of necessities in the education sector,” he said.
Sen Coltart said this tied well with the objectives of the ministry.

“The first objective has been to keep schools open and the second objective to release results. I am now moving to the third goal, which is the provision of textbooks,” he said.

The minister said at some schools, textbook shortages had reached appalling levels with over 20 students sharing one textbook.

While in schools in high-density suburbs 20 students represent a third of the class, in low-density suburbs that could be the whole class.

Schools opened in February this year after closing in September last year with teachers boycotting classrooms due to poor remuneration.

A proposed boycott that threatened to derail the start of the second term did not take off as unions agreed to work with government in trying to find a solution to the challenges facing the sector.

“We will rely on the donor community. In my discussion with donors, I emphasised that once we secure that money, I want to make sure that the last cent is spent within Zimbabwe. There is a temptation to take camera ready copies of books for printing elsewhere outside the country,” he said.

He said his ministry also advised schoolchildren and parents to buy their school requirements in the country.

“What I want to achieve is to develop a partnership between locals companies, the donor community and the ministry of higher education,” he said.

He said the second aspect of his third objective was the restoration of some of education’s magnificent facilities.

“One of the tragedies though is that as I travelled around the country I found out that there are few government schools that are well maintained,” he said.

The senator said a strategy was needed to rebuild the educational structures.
“With the decline in education in a few years there is a danger that we will lose an entire generation,” he said.

Sen Coltart said Zimbabwe had a generation of young people who were talented academically, in sports, in arts and in other areas and those talents could not be let to go to waste.

“We should start off by looking at say 20 schools and through a partnership between government and the private sector rehabilitate them. About 40 percent of places in these schools will be reserved for the underprivileged from rural areas and high-density suburbs with companies providing them with scholarships. These centres of excellence will be for children talented academically, in sports and in arts,” he said.

Sen Coltart said the aim of these centres of excellence would not be to create elitist institutions, but institutions that will afford the underprivileged good education.

He said Zimbabwe should take a leaf from India that in the 1950s created centres of excellence that achieved a lot.

“Elsewhere in the world there has been productive collaboration between government and the private sector. We have to start somewhere, let’s all start dreaming and planning,” he said.

Pambazuka News
By Prespone Matawira (2009-03-26)
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/zimnotes/55141

Prespone Matawira talks about the challenges facing David Coltart, Zimbabwe’s new minister of education, sports, arts and culture, as he devises a strategy to re-build the education system in an economy where many parents can no longer afford to pay the fees required to cover the cost of schooling, the government’s coffers are bare and the country is estimated to to have less than half the number of teachers it needs.

‘Look,’ she said to me, pointing to the multi-coloured powder paint that had fallen onto the tarmac, ‘the rainbow fell on the floor.’ She stood there, eyes wide, hands on her hips, her oversized school uniform making her look smaller than her six years.

Then, I watched her skip away, satchel in tow, to the school hall. Yes, the rainbow had come crashing down from the sky and onto the floor, landing in the car park of a private school.

In these Associated Trust Schools (ATS), parents who are unable to pay school fees see their children excluded. Barred from the classroom, separated from their friends, these sprites are exiled to the school hall. There are many parents who struggle to make the fee payments which range from anything between US$500 to US$1500 per term (three months) depending on the school.

And the handful of private and state schools where parents can pay large supplements to teachers’ salaries to subsidise the running of the school, are the only ones that are fully functional at the moment.

But in a bold move this week, the new minister of education, sports, arts and culture, David Coltart, announced that no child should be excluded from school for non-payment of fees. Arrangements for payment in instalments now have to be made to ensure that every child, no matter the school, has access to education.

This is just the beginning of what Mr Coltart, who reported for duty only a month ago, has had to deal with.

From once having one of the highest standards of education in Africa, recording a 72 per cent national O-level pass rate in the mid 1990s, last year this figure crashed to 11 per cent. With the 1990 implementation of Economic Structural Adjustment, the Zimbabwean government spent less and less on education, so that by 2006 expenditure on education was only 13 per cent of the national budget. By this time hyper-inflation had begun to bite, and it is estimated that in 2008, the value of government spending per child was equivalent to just 18 cents.

The many children in government-run schools did not receive an education last year. The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe estimates that the majority of pupils in the country had a total of 23 days uninterrupted in the classroom. The academic year should have just been cancelled.

Last year saw teachers go on strike, their salaries worthless, eroded by economic stagnation and inflation that was officially pegged at 231 million per cent. Many teachers simply could not afford to go to work because their monthly pay was less than the bus fare for the same period. This, coupled with election violence, the assault of teachers by ZANU PF militia, the looting of schools and the use of some school premises as torture centres dealt the final blow to Zimbabwe’s education system.

And now, virtually all rural schools are closed as well as some urban ones. Even if they were open and teachers tried to teach, the vast majority of schools do not have desks, they do not have textbooks, chalk or exercise books. They are overwhelmed by water and power cuts, their buildings are in a state of disrepair and children are adrift.

Nothing is more true than for some of Zimbabwe’s most vulnerable, homeless, hungry and abused: street kids. At a workshop held at Streets Ahead, a care and drop-in service for street children, girls write and paint their dreams – murals of beautiful visions of healthy and happy futures. Here girls and boys can drop in during the day, take a shower, have a meal and engage in activities such as art, drama and craft. Its a classroom even though it may not be formally recognised as such. There are many such classroom spaces in and around Zimbabwe, without walls or desks. Its an unidyllic idyll.

The girls talk and discuss as they work. As economic orphans (children left behind whilst their parents go in search of foreign curreny), girl headed households mean that girls shoulder the burden of care. Sexual violence and rape has meant that many girls now nurse babies.

But the small people go on with the business of living and learning. There are many ways to learn, formal and informal, and life in Zimbabwe teaches children skills to survive.

No matter where they are located, children always find time to play, run, laugh, have mud fights, right in the midst of everything. Life always goes on for the living. Children dream dreams even though the rainbow has fallen out of the sky.

In the formal learning domain, teachers have threatened to go on strike at the end of April 2009 if their salary demands are not met. Coltart makes no bones of the fact that right now the coffers are empty. Before he can fund teachers demands, he needs to know how many teachers he has. There is no computerised database at present and the department’s records are apparently in a chaotic state. In the past few years, many teachers have left Zimbabwe, for jobs elsewhere. It is believed that the number of teachers currently in Zimbabwe is less than 50 per cent of a full complement of 140 000.

A think tank comprised of educationalists from various sectors has been put together in order to provide strategic direction and advise in rebuilding and reviving education in Zimbabwe. The board includes amongst others, former minister of education Fay Chung, Zimbabwe Teachers Association president Tendai Chikoore, politician Trudy Stevenson, clergy man Father Joe Arimoso and Stanly Hadebe.

Infrastructure is important. Having the teachers in place is important. Having the money is important. But one of the lessons that we can take from history is that these things are not enough. Education is one of those rights that requires active mobilisation, organisation and vigilance. We have to think outside of the current parameters. What kind of country do we want? What kinds of citizens do we want in this country? What kind of curriculum is going to facilitate that?

In Zimbabwe today, education includes the participation of everyone – children, women, men, the young and the elderly – everyone has to work to construct new relations and consciousness both inside and outside the classroom. This includes a broad, relevant and dynamic curriculum, healthy cultures of questioning, debate and critique. It includes an expanded understanding of what constitutes education. Participation in seminars, assemblies, walks, volunteer work, acts of solidarity, coming together across the divides to learn and teach reading and writing, to talk and discuss, and more than this, to read and write the reality of life.

This is the hard work.

This is the work that will reflect and refract a gazillion rainbows in the lives of that six-year-old little girl standing in the school parking lot, and for hundreds and thousands like her all around the country.

* Prespone Matawira is a Zimbabwean feminist and activist who contributes to the new Chii Chirikuita: What’s up? blog.
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