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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
WITH our country’s academic flag already pitched high up there among African states flaunting the highest literacy ratings, the Government has announced plans to flourish secondary education with an additional 3 000 high schools by 2025 in 72 districts with 144 of these to be built next year.

The new schools will cater for the demand in both primary and secondary education and in that way end the recent situation whereby people walk more than 5km to school.

In a post-Cabinet media briefing in Harare this week, the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Senator Monica Mutsvangwa said the Government will engage public-private partnership for the construction of the first 144 schools.

She said that adequate furniture and Information Communication Technology equipment will be procured for each school, while a source of potable water will be installed within 500 meters of the school along with reticulation systems and ablution facilities.

Farming and manufacturing will be taught to the students, the minister said.

What is excitingly unique about the Government’s announced education formulae is that it marks a departure from the education introduced to our black people by those without knees to make us walk with a swagger and speak with the cockney accent of those riding on our black backs, while we   still remained messengers, housekeepers or gardeners posing no threat to the supremacy of the white masters until the AK47 intervened to end the white master-black servant relationship.

That way, the education provided was meant to not threaten the authority of those in power by decidedly remaining functionally literate, that is, making blacks only good for reading and writing and therefore posing no threat to colonial tyranny.

No wonder then that concern has long been loud and clear among those driven by the industrial-, developmental-needs of our motherland that education without skills to emancipate the country from its underdevelopment was akin to William Shakespeare’s play MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

It is in fulfilment of the upliftment of our country’s status in the global village that farming and manufacturing will be taught at the new secondary schools planned by the Government.

Peasants made Zimbabwe the breadbasket of Southern Africa soon after independence in 1980 with some of the food going as far North through Zambia to Egypt before the land reform programme in the early 2000’s,  and meant to raise the country’s breadbasket status much higher, however resulted in illegal economic sanctions by the United States of America and its European allies which were meant to bring about illegal regime change but for the resistance of our people.

Farming taught to students in various districts as reported should strongly anchor land reform as a source of food for local consumption and for export and in that way create employment for young farmers out there for them to eschew the urban drift which has seen many young people living miserable lives, or even engaging in crime or crossing borders in search of jobs for slave wages for them to keep soul and body together.

Our country has Bulawayo as its industrial hub, witness the city’s choice as the venue for the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair which has drawn foreign traders and potential investors to the country to see what is on offer.

Manufacturing skills taught to new students out there in the districts should lead to the creation of more small to medium enterprises being set up by the graduates, job creation and further development of our economy.

But not only that. After learning new techniques of creating new machinery, the village kids must no longer be content with making wire toy cars in the backyard of their homes but must produce industrial machinery or cars, tractors and buses for export to earn our country vital foreign currency along with a proud new image.

But for all the achievements cited above in this discourse to see the light of day, unity, peace and support for an incumbent Government are paramount.