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Robin Muchetu and Thobekile Khumalo, Sunday News Reporters
THE acting ZRP Ross Camp Primary School headmaster, Inspector Mukunzwe Simon Zimbangu, who died last week in a tragic road accident in Kwekwe has been described as a hardworking man who helped produce good grades for the police school.
Insp Zimbangu passed on in a fatal road accident at Redcliff flyover along Bulawayo-Harare Road on 28 December 2019 while he was on his way to his rural home in Gokwe.
He died together with his two children and is survived by a wife who is also a teacher at ZRP Ross Camp Primary School.
ZRP Ross Camp Primary School has maintained a steady and healthy position in the best 10 schools in Bulawayo for many years and in fact for a number of years recorded the best Grade Seven results in the province.
Last year the school recorded a 98,90 percent pass rate in their Grade Seven examinations, while in 2017 they were number seven in the best 10 schools in Bulawayo Province.
In an interview, Bulawayo Metropolitan Province provincial education director (PED), Mrs Olicah Kaira said the province had been robbed of an exemplary administrator.
“We are grieving with the family, ZRP, teachers and pupils because as a headmaster who had taken over the baton from the retired headmaster Chief Inspector Ngwenya we were expecting continuity as a system and as ministry. He understood the school and he knew how it was run as second in command. We are hoping as a ministry that the responsible authority ZRP will find another competent, people-centred administrator who will also run the school the way it was run under his leadership,” she said.
Mrs Kaira said they were going to make sure that the death of the acting headmaster was not going to affect the performance of the school in the future.
“We appreciate that his death has been very painful to us as the ministry and to us as Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, we don’t think his passing on will have an effect entirely on the results of the school because the system is there and institutions are bigger than us individuals. The ministry, schools, cluster and sister schools are there to assist ZRP Ross Camp Primary School find its feet,” she assured.
Mrs Kaira said she was confident that members of staff were still there who have institutional memory to put on track the new school head who would come.
She said it was unfortunate that both head and deputy who were running the school for years were no longer there by virtue of retirement and death.
Insp Zimbangu was born in Bulawayo in 1966 and did his primary education at ZRP Ross Camp Primary School and further proceeded to the Catholic-run Embakwe High School in Mangwe District where he completed his Ordinary Level.
After that he proceeded to then Gwanda Zintec College where he did his teacher training course and graduated in 1992.
He was then deployed to Ntunhungwe Primary school in Bulilima District where he taught up to the end of 2005.
In 2006 he was attested into the ZRP. After his training at Morris Depot he was deployed to ZRP Ross Camp School with the rank of Assistant Inspector.
In 2007 he was allocated a Grade Seven class. During his lifetime he received several accolades from the Commissioner-General of the Police, Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Merit Awards for excellent pass rates in Grade Seven.
He taught Grade Seven up to 2013 when he was promoted to the rank of inspector and became the school’s deputy headmaster. In 2016 he was deployed to South Sudan on United Nations duties where he worked for two years and returned home in 2018.
On his return he continued as deputy headmaster up to November 2019 when he became the acting headmaster after Chief Inspector Ngwenya’s retirement.
Online Reporter