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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

YES, money, money, beauty queen dinheiro — as the people of Portugal called money used between the 12th and the 15th centuries — is without any argument the answer to social and economic burdens bedevilling the economic and social welfares of any country.  

This is amply demonstrated at this time in point by the effects of Western imperialism’s satanic economic embargo imposed on our beloved motherland two decades ago in a bid to depose the incumbent ruling Zanu-PF party from power as punishment for introducing the land reform programme and in the process reunite the indigenous people of this country with their land which was usurped during British colonial rule by white settler farmers so that the true owners of the land were made to scratch infertile strips of land for their own survival.

Today the repercussions of the economic sanctions are manifest in the struggle to grow the economy so that money inflows in the form of taxes from industries can enable the Government to employ more teachers and by reducing, if not all together ending the current deficit enable Zimbabwe to continue to tout one of the highest literacy ratings on the African continent with educators demonstrating the stuff of which they are made academically.

Right now, the country reportedly needs a total of 50 000 teachers, to beef up the provision of knowledge for the eventual acquisition by students of high skills at training institutions to take the country to brave new futures for all.

But a local radio station said a few days ago that the Government could only hire 5 000 out of the number said to be needed to put our education system on even keel.

This is bound to further aggravate the situation in the education field as some teachers reportedly leave the country in search of greener monitory pastures abroad.

For instance, reports from teaching circles say the United States of America is luring teachers from this country by dangling summaries of USD$5 000 a month for a teacher compared with USD$300 a teacher earns on average in a month in Zimbabwe.

 Britain reportedly dangles pay for teachers at a scale similar to America’s.

That is in addition to teachers reportedly making beelines to other diasporan sets for better pay.

It is again reported in teaching circles that shortages of teachers result in an instructor handling a class of, say, 60 students instead of an average class of 30 students.

It is common knowledge that wearied down by the large number of people in a class, a teacher, like any other human being cannot be expected to give off his/her best at all times throughout a school year or term and so the results of his exhausted labour are bound to manifest themselves in the pass rate of his/her pupils at the end of the year.

Since, therefore, in light of the challenged picture of the future of our system of education on account of the picture this discourse tried to paint above and since good education and skills acquired there-from is the Magna Carta of any country’s economic and social success story and with that political harmony our Government might wish to consider ways to ensure that education, better education that is, does not fall prey to inadequate teaching hands.

Further beefing up the Government’s engagement and re-engagement exercise to lure foreign investors and in the process revive and reinvigorate industrial performance appears to be one possible way to grow the economy further in defiance of the foreign embargo on us so that greater inflows of taxes by companies to the Government will enable the State to hire more teachers to provide requisite education and skills to grow our country’s economy further.

Monied private players with the love of Zimbabwe and its success at heart might wish to venture into the education system by setting up schools where some of the 50 000 teachers needed in our country may be absorbed. At present Zimbabwe’s population stands at 16,6 million, having grown by 332,1% from 1962 to 2022.  Anyone will tell from the statistic that our population will continue to grow and with that the need for more schools and more teachers for the provision of good education with salient professional skills for economic growth, political and social harmony for our nation.

In the final analysis, if those in power and every other Zimbabwean put God first in all our efforts for His blessings nothing, absolutely nothing, will be impossible for this nation to accomplish and those who economically embargoed us will be put to shame.