Chronicle Editor
Leonard Ncube in Victoria Falls
GOVERNMENT established the Zimbabwe National Defence University (ZNDU) to academically fight illegal sanctions imposed on the country by America and her allies.
Education is one of the sectors hardest hit by the illegal sanctions, as institutions sometimes struggle to access some accessories and equipment used in the learning and teaching process.
In an interview on the sidelines of a meeting between ZNDU staff and students with players in the tourism industry in Victoria Falls yesterday, the institution’s Vice Chancellor and Commandant, Air Vice Marshal Michael Moyo said it is everyone’s role to support Government in the campaign against the illegal sanctions.
“The ZNDU was formed as a national defence college to respond primarily to effects of the sanctions in the country, to conscientise officers in dealing with this kind of attack, which many had been conditioned to think that it was not there and it was just travel restrictions and not sanctions, yet there is an Act of Parliament in America which says ‘you shall not have any commercial or economic dealing with Zimbabwe’.
“So basically, ZNDU was formed as a tool to counter balance sanctions by conscientising officers, senior civil servants, senior executives from parastatals and from our allies,” said Air Vice Marshal Moyo.
ZNDU started as a National Defence College before being turned into a university in 2017, and started enrolling civilians early this year.
The meeting with tourism players was the final activity in the team’s national itinerary, which started in Harare last week.
Air Vice Marshal Moyo has been leading 35 students and ZNDU staff on a countrywide tour for an appreciation of local endowments, development projects and other places of significant national interest.
The students are undertaking a 10-month National Defence Course offered by the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies at ZNDU and are drawn from members of the defence forces such as Airforce of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe National Army, Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the President and Cabinet.
Others are from allied partners, Nigeria, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi and Tanzania.
Air Vice Marshal Moyo said ZNDU also conscientises ordinary citizens through community programmes and courses targeted at non-uniformed members of society.
He urged members of the public to be wary of untruths peddled, especially on social media, which seek to negate the political and economic progress made by the country.
Air Vice Marshal Moyo encouraged the public to participate in national programmes from wherever they are, saying this relates to the liberation war era where every citizen had a role to play regardless of location.
“Conscientising is not a once-off job, as time goes on people are understanding what ZNDU is about. As we train more and more officers and citizens, they begin to have tools to analyse things differently. We now enroll self-sponsoring students and we once hosted the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Defence and Security and they left understanding what we are for.
“One of our biggest problems is that ordinary people are not able to analyse things differently if they read things on social media. I believe that in that regard our contribution is to continue with what we are doing as ZNDU conscientising officers and individuals that come as students because we have no mandate to stand up and talk about sanctions. We will be deviating to politics and the defence act prohibits us from participating in politics,” he said.
He said the institution is a state-owned university largely funded by the State and also feels the effects of sanctions and other shocks such as lack of funding.
In a separate interview at the 22nd WaterNet Symposium being hosted by the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) here, Nust lecturer in the civil engineering department Mrs Sakhile Ndlovu said learning institutions had tried to survive using locally available resources.
“The country is in a quest to become a middle-income economy by 2030 and through Education 5.0, we have been actively involved in community service and research to help in the development agenda using locally available resources.
“We are pushing education and innovation which will help us upscale student research and industrialisation towards self-sufficiency instead of depending on external aid; change should come from within ourselves,” she said.
Another academic at the WaterNet Symposium Dr Eugene Makaya called for establishment of partnerships as a way of going around challenges faced in the education sector.
“Equipment is not easily accessible as most of the requirements used in laboratories are imported. We are meeting at this symposium and hope we get partnerships and synergies that bring resources locally,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s fast track land reform programme, which was implemented at the turn of the millennium, led to the United States imposing illegal and unjustified sanctions under the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA) of 2001 and the Executive Sanctions (Executive Order 13288) of March 2003 which are renewable annually.
The European Union also introduced its own sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Government has said the sanctions are illegal as they were not sanctioned by United Nations.
To help Zimbabwe out of the illegal embargos, Sadc Heads of State declared, at the 2019 Sadc summit, October 25 is the day on which the regional bloc’s member states collectively campaign against sanctions on Zimbabwe through various activities and platforms until the illegal sanctions are removed. – @ncubeleon
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