adminTHE Department of Psychomotor Activities was set up by His Excellency President R G Mugabe in August 2013 with Honourable J. D. Hungwe appointed its Minister.
| At the beginning of 2014, only two functional members of staff manned the Department and these were a Director and the Minister’s Personal Assistant. |
The Department has now grown in leaps and bounds to have a Permanent Secretary, a Principal Director, two Directors, four Deputy Directors, as well as support staff.
At this point the reader may muse, what is psychomotor? What does the Department really do?
The purpose of this article and the articles to follow is to try and answer these questions by showing some the small projects the department has and is currently engaged in in order to fulfil its mandate.
For common understanding, psychomotor means learning by translating the theory learnt into practical applications (learning by doing). This is derived from psychologist, Benjamin Bloom’s Learning Taxonomy of 1956.
Bloom’s Taxonomy states that learning comes in three domains which are cognitive (knowing), psychomotor (doing) and affective (feelings/attitudes). As psychomotor practitioners we believe that the three domains work best if incorporated and the best way to go about it is to focus on ‘doing’ because you cannot do something you do not ‘know’, neither can you ‘feel’ something unless you do it.
Promoting innovation
Zimbabweans in general and in both public and private sectors always exclaim in amazement at the wonders of innovations from locals but it ends there. So what?
Different science and innovation expos showcase some interesting projects which no one shows interest in promoting and hence sometimes our innovators end up being sponsored by foreign countries and the country loses out.
World over, innovation has been stifled by this lack of support and buy-in. What then is innovation? It simply is creativity, improving on an existing product or service. One builds on an existing product or service with a view to adding value, usefulness or functionality.
This is the case with one Leonard Mupingidza also known as Nyamasoka whose life is about to change through his association with the Department of Psychomotor Activities in Education.
Mupingidza was born in rural Guruve in 1983 and his formal education ended at Grade 7 in 1998 but this did not deter his resolve to make something out his life. He says that early in his life, as others made toy wire cars, he was interested in using wire and discarded electrical gadgets to make electrical toys that could be used at home.
As other homes were using paraffin lamps, he could put together old batteries and light bulbs to provide lighting for his mother as she was cooking at night. The interest in electrical gadgets led him to build his first wire elephant FM radio in 2008 whilst still in Guruve. The fact that his gadgets sometimes blew up into flames did not stop him.
Why an elephant, we quizzed Mupingidza? His response was simple, “It is because that is my totem. I am the elephant, the big animal (Nzou, Samanyanga, Mhukahuru, in Shona)”.
In 2010, having gotten married to wife Loveness, Mupingidza relocated to Harare and ever since is resident in the high density suburb of Epworth.
With no job offers, Mupingidza began to use his God given skills to eke a living. Whilst displaying his wire wares of different animal MP3 players, a member of the public advised him to go to the press in 2012, and this yielded some response.
The Herald of December 3, 2012 featured the wonder boy Mupingidza and some clients started responding. His highest sales were of a crocodile which cost $150 and an elephant he sold for $200.
Everything went quiet again until he was asked to feature at the Zanu PF Youth Expo for the 21st February Movement of 2014 at the Harare International Conference Centre. The Harare Province Zanu PF youths handed President Mugabe his wire crocodile as a birthday present. For those who may not know, the President’s totem – Gushungo – is actually a crocodile.
One would have thought that after this type of publicity, someone from industry or even well wishers would have shown some interest in Mupingidza and his creative work but still there were no takers.
A twist of fate in 2015 saw Mupingidza displaying his wares with well wishing sculptors at Imba Shiri, Lake Chivero, where he met officers from the Department of Psychomotor Activities.
On viewing the animal music players, Mupingidza was advised to cover up the wires which made his products very unattractive as all the machinery would be in the open. With frame and electronics covered as can be seen in the fish on the picture, Leonard’s creations became more real.
The result is that in April 2016, the Psychomotor Department displayed at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF), Mupingidza’s crocodile MP3 and the elephant MP3, as well as the FM radio, much to the amazement of all who visited the stand.
What was even more amazing to the visitors was hearing that Mupingidza had no formal training in electronics and that he does not have secondary school education.
As we write this article, Mupingidza is now a part-time employee and trainee at Mukonitronics or M-Tron Africa.
Upon viewing his wire elephant, Mr Mukono, who heads Mukotronics, could not believe that such innovation could come out of Epworth. He vowed to ensure that Mupingidza’s creations are developed with the assistance of his engineering team to the extent that they can be mass produced for the commercial market.
The stars appear to be shining bright for the humble boy from Guruve who, God willing, might become a role model for many like him scattered around Zimbabwe.
One of the roles of the Psychomotor Activities Department is to cater for the unskilled and unemployed youths of Zimbabwe. This is a task that can only be achieved with the full cooperation of all stakeholders – the youths, the communities, the public and private sectors in setting up skills training centres that can complement already existing structures in Ministries such as Indigenisation, Youth Empowerment and Employment Creation; Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development; Primary and Secondary Education as well as Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology.
The department currently identifies people like Mupingidza and tries to assist by linking them to organisations that can offer training to ensure solid reputable life skills. We wish to thank Mr Mukono and Mukonitronics for opening doors for people like Mupingidza who had no hope for any form of progress in their lives and take this opportunity to call upon you Zimbabwean entrepreneurs and industrialists to partner us as we try and turn around our country from being a consumer into a producer.
This article was written for The Sunday Mail by the Department of Psychomotor activities in education.
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