admin
Patience Malaba
In the past few weeks, there has been intense debate about the issues of deployment of non-Ndebele speaking teachers to teach pupils at primary schools in Matabeleland. The debate is part of the long standing discourse that has become the backbone of the marginalisation agenda of the people of the region.
It is my argument from the very onset that it is totally unacceptable for non-speakers of a certain language to think that they can bring sound development to pupils at primary school level. In fact this even undermines the provisions of the new constitution which speaks of 16 languages listed in it as rights and not privileges and in binding jargon states that the government will take “reasonable steps” to ensure that they are formalised. While I am aware of the emotional charges that have been brought into the public sphere about this subject taking cognisance of the genesis of the problem, it is not my intention to list the problems caused by this issue as they have been properly articulated by most people who have contributed to the debate in the past weeks.
However, I have noted and I stand to be corrected that in most of the debates the emotional approach to the subject has actually clouded our reasoning and judgment to an extent that we have failed to move from the mere articulation of the causes of the problem to structured policy proposals that can address the problem. It is always easy to point out a problem but it needs greater reasoning and soberness to contribute to solutions of such emotive issues like ones of linguistic and economic marginalisation. In my thinking, what needs to be done now is to provide strong proposals on how we deal with the issue.
Firstly, there is a need to understand that the gist of the matter is not tribal but it is an issue of language, which affects Ndebele speakers and non-Ndebele speakers like the Tonga, Nambya, Sotho, Venda, Kalanga, Shangani and Xhosa. Secondly, there is a need for a united approach that is holistic, and addresses the problems in a manner that does not discriminate on the mere basis of surnames. In some instances there has been oversight in dealing with Matabele problems in that some people jump to describing people of Matabeleland as those with Ndebele names only.
Yet, the region is a rainbow nation which should celebrate its linguistic diversity and rainbow nature as was constructed by King Mzilikazi. In simpler terms, the united approach must embrace the many young people and even older ones who were born here and grew up here and know no other home except Bulawayo yet they have Shona names. These are people who speak Ndebele with fluency of Ngunis having even learnt and passed it with distinctions at school and for some even at university.
Note that this does not seek to applaud non-Ndebele speakers teaching Ndebele children but seeks to highlight the reality of such persons, whose only home is Bulawayo and thus by virtue a part of the region. They are just like the Gwebu community in Manicaland who have come to be part of the Manicaland region and the Sotho people in Masvingo who have become pillars of that region’s culture. So if the issue of Ndebele teachers is to be solved there is a need to respect the people of the region in their linguistic diversity.
Given the background of the linguistic diversity of the region, there is need for a structured policy intervention which provides for affirmative action for recruitment of students who speak these languages in colleges that are in their provinces.
For instance, there is need for the Matabeleland South teacher training college to have an affirmative action that seeks to reserve equal seats for students from each of Matabeleland South districts. This means that if their annual intake is, for instance, 700 they reserve equal 100 seats for students from each of the province’s seven districts. In this way they will be able to train a 100 from Beitbridge district and thus take care of the Venda speakers, 100 from Mangwe, 100 from Bulilima and thus take care of Kalanga and Ndebele speakers, Mzingwane, Matobo and Insiza and thus take care of the Ndebele speakers, Gwanda and thus take care of the Sotho and Ndebele speakers.
After that the Civil Service Commission should make sure that for some time there is deliberate deployment of these people back to their districts until the situation improves.
In Matabeleland North there is a need to construct a teacher training college, one of the most logical and easier approaches would be to locate it at a central position and for me the Kamativi area becomes one such point, despite the fact that Lupane is the capital of the province. The Kamativi area is appropriate because of the Kamativi mine which is no longer operational but has sufficient infrastructure to accommodate a teacher college. Already a precedent has been set with the renovation and use of the infrastructure of Epoch mine in Filabusi to temporarily and hopefully permanently accommodate the Gwanda State University for even distribution of strategic national institutions across the province.
Using the same formula applied in Matabeleland South at the “Kamativi Teacher Training College” a quota should be reserved for people from Tsholotsho, Bubi, Umguza, Nkayi, Hwange, Lupane and Binga district to be accommodated, trained and later deployed as teachers to those districts. This way it will assist take care of problems of non-speakers on languages like Nambya in Jambezi and Tonga in Binga as well as Xhosa in uMguza. I am sure it is up to the political heavy weights of Matabeleland North like Hon Jacob Mudenda, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Dr Obert Mpofu, Hon Sithembiso Nyoni and Hon Cain Mathema to come up with a plan to ensure that the province that I come from has a teacher training college.
The colleges in Bulawayo should then be the ones that give priority to the metropolitan nature and diversity of the city but with fewer people from other provinces and they should be taken care of at their provinces. I am convinced that there are many young and qualified people in these provinces who have interest in taking up teacher training but are let down because of lack of infrastructure and where there is, it is because we shy away from affirmative action. In my understanding some years back when there were two universities in Zimbabwe and there was stiff competition which saw the exclusion of many females at the University of Zimbabwe and Nust, the government introduced affirmative action for females and like all affirmative programmes it was met with resistance but later on people got used to it and today we have many females who benefited from it and are contributing immensely to national development.
Affirmative action has worked in different contexts before and it is time that we ensure that it is used in teacher training to deal with the issue of non Ndebele, Kalanga, Nambya, Tonga, Sotho and Venda teachers in those districts that have a dominance of these languages. As I conclude my proposal, I also call upon the very few universities in the region, as a complementary measure to the affirmative action to deliberately ensure promotion of courses that teach the diverse languages of the region.
Patience Malaba is a civil society activist and an undergraduate student in Development Studies at Lupane State University. She writes in her personal capacity. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Online Reporter