Young Nomsa Dube’s graduation ceremony last week was characterized by celebration of hard work and achievement. All and sundry were invited; from family members to varsity mates and former high school friends.

During endless speeches, I sat among three visibly dejected youngsters at the back of the audience. Through their suppressed mumblings, I discovered that the trio, Nomsa’s former high school classmates, probably much brighter than her, was from government run-universities which had been closed for most of last year. The reason for this is endless strikes, huge exodus of experienced teaching and administrative staff due to lack of government grants. For them, graduation day was still a pipedream.

Privately-run, expensive universities like Nomsa’s, were left unperturbed and students graduated in time to snatch all jobs becoming more and more scarce.

Foreign varsities

While Zimbabwe’s education system has been collapsing drastically since 2000, government ministers, largely responsible for the crumble, especially in public schools and universities, send their children to private institutions inside and outside the country, at times using scarce state resources.

Roll calls at universities in South Africa, Australia, Canada, the United States, Malaysia and Hong Kong would reveal a very high student enrolment  from Zimbabwe. This confirms that the majority of the parents sending their kids to such institutions belong to the governing elite including the state president, ministers and  judges.

Targeted sanctions have seen the expulsion of children of some of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU (PF) loyalists from plush foreign colleges as punishment for their parents’ roles in causing decay in the country.

Whenever private institutions charged realistic fees, the former one-party government used all sorts of statutes to block them, mainly for political patronage, especially towards election times. Unreasonable controls reduced government schools and universities to total shame through collapsed infrastructures, no text books, unqualified teachers and administrators and; worse still, no electricity and water most of the time.

A lecturer  from the University of Zimbabwe told me that the administration is presiding over the demise of a once top university in Africa. The staff is ridiculously underpaid and the administration has turned a blind eye to their cause and treats them with disdain and contempt.

A similar story can be told about all state-run primary, secondary and tertiary educational establishments. Demonstrations by militant students  and teachers’ unions were always met with heavy police brutality or at least some empty promises in the new dispensation.

Massive dropouts

With the US dollarization of the Zimbabwean economy every parent is expected to pay school fees and levies in the greenback, which is still a scarce resource for many in the grassroots, civil service and corporate world.

Since the formation of the current national unity government of former opposing parties, civil servants are paid a paltry $140.00, the same amount which will be earned by recently graduated Nomsa as first pay this month as a junior civil servant. Nomsa is presently the sole breadwinner in her extended family of six.

Monthly utilities per household, excluding basic groceries cost $150. Government schools ask for $120 per term while private schools and universities require between $500-$2000.

Drop-outs are increasing at an alarming rate. A return to the once enviable, first class education system in Zimbabwe might take decades to achieve.

Below is an interview with Clever Bere, the President of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU):