Online Reporter
Dr Irene Mahamba, Correspondent
THIS article looks at education from the liberation struggle perspective and links it to the curriculum that was offered soon after independence in April 1980.
The current Zimbabwe Education Framework for Primary and Secondary Education 2015-2022 has its origins in the liberation struggle.
Young people set out for Zambia and Mozambique on their own.
The Rhodesians would track them down and some would be slaughtered while others would escape by a hair’s breadth.
Others were injured in the process but they braved flooded rivers and wild animals with some crossing the Gonarezhou National Park on their own. Some walked all the way from Zimbabwe to Zambia or Mozambique. When they got there, they were screened by the leaders.
Those who were below 18 years were sent to school. This was not the easiest thing for them to accept because they had left home to be equipped to fight the Rhodesian terrorist forces, not to be put in school.
However, through political education lessons, they got to understand that the schools were preparing them to fight when they were old enough.
The political lessons, plus the military routines in the camps and the discipline consoled them and gave them hope that they would receive military training and go back home to fight.
Schooling in the struggle
One of the first schools was established in 1973 at Chifombo in Zambia under the leadership of Cde Sheba Tavarwisa. It started off as a school for women combatants who were not yet ripe to be deployed on the battlefront. Cde Sheba was a trained school teacher.
The school had no teaching or learning materials of its own so Cde Sheba and her colleague, Cde Pedzisai, resorted to using school materials from Rhodesia and adapted them so that they could relate to the liberation of Zimbabwe.
The school was moved to Tembwe in Tete Province in 1975 following Mozambique’s independence.
Up to 1977, education fell under the Department of the Commissariat.
The first Secretary of the new Education and Culture Department was Cde Ernest Kadungure, who was appointed in early 1977 at the historic Chimoio meeting.
His deputy was Cde Tavarwisa. Cde Kadungure was succeeded by Cde Dzingai Mutumbuka towards the end of 1977.
Cde Tavarwisa retained her position as the Deputy Secretary for Education and Culture.
By 1978, there were eight schools spread throughout the network of camps in Mozambique. They were catering for about 20 000 schoolchildren in places such as Doiroi, Chibawawa and Xai-Xai. The headquarters of the Education Department was at Matenje Base, in the Mavhudzi area of Tete Province.
The camp schools were organised along military lines, each camp with a camp commander, camp commissar and a camp security officer. These three were always fully trained military personnel.
Research Unit
Each school had research officers and the research leadership was at Matenje Base. The Chief Research Officer was Cde Ephraim Chitofu (Cde Mushatagotsi) while Cde Fay Chung was his deputy.
The research officers were responsible for various study areas.
The teachers also fell under the Research Unit. They had direct responsibility for the learners and for implementing the teaching and learning programmes.
The research team, the teachers and students were part of the command structure of the camp, right down to the section level.
This structure at the Matenje Base was replicated throughout the schools in Mozambique. The main mandate of the Research Unit was to analyse the colonial system of education and come up with strategies to correct it for use in the struggle.
“It would have been a tragedy for freedom fighters who were prepared to give up their lives to liberate the country from the ruthless fascist regime of Ian Smith to perpetuate the colonial system of education unwittingly through inadequate analysis of the system and content of colonial education,” Cde Mutumbuka was quoted as saying in 1986.
Inevitably, the findings of the Research Unit were that there was a perfect fit between the Rhodesian political agenda and its education system thus its education was totally incompatible with the liberation agenda and the development of a free Zimbabwe. In Cde Mutumbuka’s words, as reported in the Zimbabwe News in 1978:
“Most colonial textbooks are full of falsifications and pernicious ideas we would never like our youths to grow up with.”
For this reason, one of the primary activities of the Research Unit was curriculum development, which involved coming up with new syllabi and teaching and learning materials that would further the cause of the struggle.
Therefore, the Research Unit — which was composed of veteran teachers, graduates and researchers — embarked on an extensive programme to produce revolutionary syllabi for all levels: from early childhood development to Advanced Level and for teacher training.
Each syllabus was developed in a way that integrated theory, practice and production.
Thus the agriculture lessons were practised on agricultural plots, the carpentry produced desks and chairs, fashion and fabrics produced uniforms and the literature lessons produced spectacular plays.
The children also participated in the preparation of their meals and constructed their own barracks or shelters.
The Unit came up with classic texts such as the Zimbabwe is Our Country (Books 1-5), Svinurai (Books 1-5), and creative writing works such as Woman in Struggle, as well as a basic political economy text in Shona and Ndebele titled Upfumi Navashandi.
Plays such as the one titled The People are Invincible, which was performed for the delegates to a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in 1979 in Maputo, Mozambique, were also produced.
The Research Unit also produced some revolutionary essays on teacher education.
These essays have since been bound into a book titled The New Teacher which was published by the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production (Zimfep).
The teaching and learning materials produced by the Research Unit were intrinsically related to the struggle.
This made it easy for the children to understand their lessons as one of the teachers at Matenje said, “Caught up as they were in a cruel and frightening situation, these young children struggled to make sense of their experiences. It was in such a context that the curriculum developed at Matenje illuminated the children’s understanding of the situation of their country, Zimbabwe, caught up in the fiercest liberation struggle against fascism and settler domination.” (Schools in the Struggle, 1991).
The following are excerpts based on feedback gleaned from reports published by the Education and Culture Department in 1979. They illustrate the extent to which the school curriculum was woven within the struggle.
“Long ago, the colonialists came to our country. The colonialists came from Britain and South Africa. The people of Zimbabwe fought against the colonialists, but the colonialists defeated them. The colonialists defeated the people of Zimbabwe because the people of Zimbabwe fought with bows and arrows but the colonialists fought with guns.
“The settlers built their government in our country. They said, ‘This is our country, its name is Rhodesia.’ The settlers began to rule the people of Zimbabwe. They built many jails. They forced the people to give them cattle and taxes. Some people could not pay taxes so the settlers sent their policemen to arrest them and put them in jail.
“The people of Zimbabwe were not happy with the settlers because the settlers were cruel. The laws of the settler government were cruel, too. So the people of Zimbabwe sat down together. They said, ‘We must have a party so that we can fight against the settlers . . . We must look for some guns so that we can fight against the settlers.”
Thus what the pupils learned was related to their purpose for being in the struggle.
The other major activity of the Research Unit was teacher education.
A revolutionary teacher training programme which linked theory and practice was developed. The teacher trainees would attend eight weeks of intensive theoretical study, followed by four weeks of closely supervised teaching practice, one week break and eight weeks’ final session thus effectively integrating theory and practice, unlike the traditional programmes which housed teachers at the colleges most of the time only introducing teaching practice at the end and for a very short period of time.
The brainchild of the Matenje Teacher Education Course, the Zimbabwe Integrated Teacher Education Course (Zintec), which was introduced in 1982, has since produced thousands of teachers.
As already mentioned, the work of the Research Unit was forward-looking to the liberated Zimbabwe.
This is demonstrated by the choice of topics for some of the research carried out by the Unit such as: Agricultural Resettlement After Independence; A Blueprint for Establishing Schools in the Liberated Zones and How to tackle the Shortage of Qualified Teachers after Independence.
What should be clear is that the Research Unit was set up to spearhead the development of an education system that would serve the needs of a liberation army that was poised to transform education in an independent Zimbabwe. If we had intended to duplicate colonial education during the struggle and after independence, there would have been no need for the Research Unit.
During the liberation struggle, it was very clear that education was a critical front of our struggle for liberation so the liberation movements took the curriculum into their own hands.
*Dr Irene Mahamba is a war veteran who writes in her personal capacity. She has first-hand information on the nature of education that was offered during the liberation struggle. –— The Patriot
