Education in Zimbabwe

Title: Education in Zimbabwe

 

Introduction

Education in Zimbabwe was hailed as one of the best in the world before the economic crisis that started out in 2000 drove teachers to emigrate or to shift to other careers, leading to brain drain, and left funding for public schools at the brink of extortion for other government priorities. The failure of the Zimbabwean currency and the economy at large, led this equated triumph of a deprived economy into deterioration. Nonetheless, Zimbabwe still remains and upholds to this day its advocacy for literacy as it headed South Africa as with the highest literacy rate, ahead of Tunisia. Based on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) latest statistical digest, this South African country has a 92 per cent literacy rate, up from 85 per cent, with Tunisia behind, at 87 per cent. Despite inadequacies, the heavy subsidy on education that the government invested in the early post-independence years resulted into vast improvements from the colonial-era system.

 

Core of Zimbabwe’s educational system

Most South African nations received a Bantu educational system which was enacted by the Bantu Education Act, Act No 47 of 1953 that aimed to establish and promote discrimination and apartheid. The legislator was a white, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister) who established a Black Education Department in the Department of Native Affairs which would compile a curriculum that suited the “nature and requirements of the black people”. This act prevented Africans to hold jobs, for example abroad, but was designed to ensure Africans could only be menial labourers under whites. They didn’t have good literacy and numeracy skills. On the other hand, in Zimbabwe, a very transparent curriculum was devised sometime in 1950.  During the 1960s to 1970s, a series of bottlenecks was created so that majority of the white children could benefit while only very talented black children could get through. Then in 1980 a major reform was undertaken by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which just came to power, that essentially broke all bottlenecks in Zimbabwean schools. Members of this movement rapidly expanded the education system which benefited all people and abolished discrimination. At the end of 1980, the Zimbabwe education system was hailed as the best in the whole of South Africa, leading other states by a considerable margin and to some extent, infiltrated the realms of the best schools in the world. Nevertheless, the success never went up as it was obstructed by the country’s poor economic system, limiting all possible funding and education access of the citizens. At the end of the 1990s, Zimbabwean education has significantly gone downhill.

 

Factors affecting Zimbabwe’s educational system

There are serious drawbacks in the Zimbabwean economy that impede the maximum potential of the country. At one point, the country had its best teachers, best curriculum offers and best instructional materials among all other South African states. Politics seemed to be the crux of this dilemma as it had been preventing the economy to go uphill and to be resilient at crucial points.  Probably the most unfortunate thing Zimbabwe today is the fact that poverty could have been avoided a few decades ago if people here just decided not to turn to violence and greed and not to let their racist minds get the better of them. Zimbabwe was once one of the most flourishing farm areas in the entire world and they were not even close to thinking that they could eventually become poor or live in squalor.  Zimbabwe’s economy was booming not too long ago as it was primarily run by hereditary white farmers and business men who were doing a wonderful job growing farm crops and exporting them overseas. Commerce and trade was pretty alive. Then all of a sudden, the African Mugube, one of the most ruthless and hardened criminal organizations in the entire world, started killing off the farmers and took over the business themselves due to their hatred of the white race. Furthermore, both politics and economic distress creep into the mainstream of society preventing them from improving and stabilizing.

 

Conclusion

A strong education is imperative for democracy to become effective and an economy to become lifted. So far, Zimbabwe has displayed an excellent effort in achieving an outstanding literacy rate of 92%, the highest in all Africa. However, although children are taught properly in order for them to develop good literacy and numeracy skills, access the Internet and read, which are imperative for people empowerment, the country nonetheless continues to be poverty-stricken with a lot of political issues.   Thus, society must become accountable to lead its citizens to empowerment because through it, people would know their rights, prevent corruption of officials and improve economy, in general.   

 

 

Reference:

Johnstone, Danielle. (2011).Interview with Zimbabwean minister of education, sport and

culture. Global conversation online. Retrieved from

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving, 9 May 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

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