- Dear Family and Friends,
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- We have just come to the end of a very tense three months
in Zimbabwe's educational calendar as schools closed for the summer break
this week. When I popped into the school office on the last day of term
it wasn't to get my son's report but to ask if we would still have a school
to come back to in September. Zimbabwe's schools have been teetering on
the edge of collapse for the last three months since our Minister of Education
declared that private schools were too expensive and stipulated that schools
could only charge what his Ministry decided was an acceptable fee - regardless
of what we, the parent body thought, decided, voted for or agreed to with
our School Associations and Boards.
-
- Despite the fact that inflation is at almost 400%, the
Minister of Education refused to back down on his ruling about school fees.
During this school term, postage and telephone costs have risen by over
400%. Talking in percentages tends to be meaningless and I find myself
turning to the actual dollars and cents. Last term when my son's school
needed to send me an important letter (one that wouldn't get buried at
the bottom of his suitcase), it cost $500. Now it costs $2300 for just
the stamp and says nothing of the price of the paper, the envelope, the
computer ink and the wages of the person who writes the letter. I punched
a few numbers into my calculator this morning and worked out that if each
parent at my son's school were to get just one posted letter a month from
the school, the cost of the stamps alone would consume 1.2 million dollars.
The Minister of Education has stipulated that this school cannot charge
more than 1.4 million dollars per child per term. So one students entire
school fees for a three month term, gives each parent just one letter a
month from the school.
-
- Last term when my son got sick and the school had to
phone me, the call cost $120. This term that same three minute call costs
$585. Last term when my son got sick I knew that the school would give
him ear drops, a bandage or a pain killer. This term I know that none of
those things are guaranteed anymore. When you extrapolate the dollars and
cents of the most basic services into the number of students at an average
small private school, it is horrific and physically impossible for the
schools to run on the fees the Minister of Education has stipulated.
-
- No one really knows why Zimbabwe's Minister of Education
has decided to do what he is doing to our private schools. The Minister
continues to shout about racism in the 1960's and the privileged white
elite, but he still chooses to ignore the fact that the enrolment at all
Zimbabwe's private schools in 2004 is comprised of at least 80% black children.
The Minister is adamant that no private schools may increase their fees
again in 2004, completing ignoring the existence of 394.6% inflation. It
is almost as if the Minister has just decided that inflation and education
don't mix, and that's the end of it.
-
- For three months schools have been struggling on, depending
on donations from parents and staggering from one week to the next, hoping
that sanity would surface or sense would prevail. It has not and already
the obvious repercussions have begun. Last week one private school, established
in 1911, has declared its necessity to go into provisional liquidation
as it simply cannot pay its bills anymore. Everything in Zimbabwe is now
directly affected by the politics and governance of our ruling party and
I mean everything.
-
- Until next week, love cathy.
-
- Copyright cathy buckle 7th August 2004.
-
- http://africantears.netfirms.com
-
- My books on the Zimbabwean crisis, "African Tears"
and "Beyond Tears" are available outside Africa from: orders@africabookcentre.com
; www.africabookcentre.com ; www.amazon.co.uk ; in Australia and New Zealand:
johnmreed@johnreedbooks.com.au ; Africa: www.kalahari.net www.exclusivebooks.com
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