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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
VICTORIA Falls residents have urged Government to withdraw a Form One Heritage Studies textbook which was introduced as part of the new education curriculum as it contains distorted information.

Two meetings had been organised for Victoria Falls, one at Chinotimba Primary School and another at Mosi-oa-Tunya High School.

The Mosi-oa-Yunya meeting was cancelled and no explanation was given while the other one at Chinotimba was attended by a few people who included mostly teachers from the host school.

The committee which was led by Mashonaland West proportional representation MP Mrs Consilia Chinanzvavana spent less than 30 minutes at the meeting before leaving in a hurry saying they were heading for another meeting.

There was near chaos as scores of residents who included teachers from surrounding schools arrived at 10AM as the committee was leaving for Dete, where two more meetings were lined up.

Making a presentation at the Chinotimba meeting, Mr John Sianaka who is proprietor of Lulu Education Academy produced a textbook which he said needed to be withdrawn from the curriculum.

“This book must be removed as it is distorting both our history and culture. Our school bought more than 100 of these textbooks only to discover the book is not usable. This means that we lost our money as each costs $24. I have written to the authors and publisher but they only apologised which doesn’t help, we want it withdrawn,” said Mr Sianaka.

There was near commotion as scores of residents swarmed him to have a look at the book.

Some teachers also confirmed that they had failed to use the book.

Messrs B Matseketsa and S Mashaah are the authors of the book which has been approved by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education.

There are also errors on the national anthem on the first page.

Another error in the book is the section about Tonga traditional courtship where the authors seem to have accessed Wikipedia and uprooted notes on Tonga Islands which they assumed referred to Tonga culture in Binga.

“What is faikava, these people must be banned from the education sector. There is nothing like faikava in Tonga. A section which introduces traditional dances, shockingly refers to muchongoyo, isitshikitsha and amabhiza as “popular dances among the Ndebele,” said one resident.

Muchongongoyo is a Tshangani dance while amabhiza is popular with the Kalanga.

Another section was written “the concept of ubuntu/unhu/vumunhu comes from the isiZulu expression Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which also drew the ire of residents.

Residents said the new curriculum implementation was rushed and brought confusion into schools as it is not clear which examination the current Form Fours will write.

They told the committee that the new curriculum had added unnecessary workload on pupils and teachers despite lack of both human and material resources.

Residents said teachers need to be trained on the curriculum and the number of tasks given to pupils should also be reduced. — @ncubeleon