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Stephen Mpofu
In the wake of a phenomenal growth in education during 36 years of independence, the time is succulently ripe for Zimbabwe to pull all stops in refining the curriculum of education with a skills bias for the creation of more jobs for young people and for them to take effective control of the country’s economy as any truly sovereign state is wont to do.
This move obviously entails giving the youth of this country an upbringing that is not only good but is, more importantly, more relevant to the country as one in a hurry to develop its full economic potential.
As things stand right now, one might suggest with equanimity that it is at best a pity and, at worst a tragic irony that for so many years after the attainment of our independence in 1980 white collar-education enjoyed pre-eminence over work suit-education which ought rightly to have enjoyed dominance given Zimbabwe’s rich (natural) resource base in land and minerals that pulsate underground waiting to be exploited for the betterment of the welfare of all Zimbabweans.
Today, young people flaunting paper-education tramp the streets of Zimbabwe’s cities and towns, shy of causing potholes, as they chase white collar jobs that continue to recede from their very sight, like mirages while, on the other side of the spectrum, foreigners armed with skills education exploit our mineral endowments not for Zimbabwe’s benefit but to fatten the bellies of people in their native countries.
Indeed, foreign companies would not today stand accused of having blown billions of dollars worth of diamonds out of the country from Marange in Manicaland province were the mining companies in question owned and run by Zimbabwean nationals.
Which underscores, as President Robert Mugabe told war veterans at his meeting with them in Harare recently, the need for the former freedom fighters to open their own mines using skills obtained from tertiary institutions so that they become employers of foreign technicians instead of the reverse being the case as it now is.
Come to think of it, is it not a shame that Zimbabweans have to scratch, like chickens, as panners the peripheries of rich mineral deposits where foreign companies rule the roost?
This ironic scenario reminds this pen of the boast often heard from whites in colonial Rhodesia to the effect that: “Lo country yena ka wena, lo mali yena kathina.” When translated, the statement means: “The country is yours, (but) the money is ours.”
It is all very well that a new start in giving skills education a huge push has started with science education at universities and other tertiary institutions. Graduates should give the country’s development a fresh new start with skills obtained.
Similarly, the inclusion of agriculture in curricula at primary – grade seven – and at secondary schools should give young Zimbabweans good preparation to play an active role in the development of this country’s agricultural-based economy.
In this regard, it behoves on parents to encourage their offspring to love the soil, for which many, other young people died executing the war to liberate that very soil from occupation by white foreign racist rulers.
Zimbabwean youth should disabuse themselves of the colonial notion about the Periphery – rural areas – as being a place reserved for poor blacks, while the Centre, or urban setup, with all the best facilities imaginable, as being the place for “civilised” people, the whites with their black servants.
It was this inferiority tag attached to rural areas by colonialists which triggered the urban drift by blacks in search of a better life in the Centre, a life that, however, became an illusion for many who ended up doing menial jobs for their white masters and for a measly wage, with many others drifting across the border to neighbouring countries where life was and still is not that much rosy either for many who continue to seek their fortunes in the diasporas.
At his meeting with former freedom fighters the President also urged his audience to move out and occupy the land set aside for them under the agrarian revolution to improve their lives rather than keep insisting on the 20 percent land allocation being included in the constitution.
Again the message here is crystal clear. While the constitution is the country’s supreme law, it however does not possess hands to work the land and produce food for local consumption or for export to earn much-needed foreign currency.
Our able bodied young men and women possess those hands but on which they sit all the while mulling over a lack of jobs and money and food and what have you (yes you) but none of which grows on trees but results from sweat and an unflinching determination to improve one’s lot and that of a collective people as a focused nation whose destiny lies in its own hands rather than on foreign handouts.
When aggregated with metalwork, woodwork, and bricklaying also taught in schools, skills education will give young Zimbabweans and our country a brave new future.
But should the country continue to fall far short of the necessary, appropriate, or skills-grounded education Zimbabweans will continue perpetually to settle for the whey, while foreigners skim away the cream of the country’s rich natural resources and under our very noses.
Granted, transforming the landscape of our education will require a huge outlay of money, and yet the dividend will far exceed the expenditure.
Online Reporter