Govt should restore teachers’ dignity

AFRICAN leaders have never valued education. It is never their culture to learn and explore.

The current leadership in Zimbabwe is a very good example. Our leadership does not even value quality education. It is silently killing our education system because it wants to hang on to power.

Teachers play a very important and pivotal role in shaping society and empowering it through unpacking knowledge.

Why are Zimbabwean teachers still being paid peanuts under such a harsh economic environment? We always see them engaging in strike action and the cycle continues unabated, thereby disrupting and interfering with the time for students to learn.

I am surprised by the utterances by President Emmerson Mnangagwa who said government could not be armtwisted by teachers. Have teachers become enemies of the State or do they pose a threat to national security?

The fact will remain that teachers across the country are incapacitated and the government must pay them a living wage.

School pupils are now involved in anti-social vices because of the absence of teachers. The system has destroyed the future of the next generations. A once vibrant Zimbabwean education is slowly going down the drain, while leaders are watching.

Most parents cannot afford to send their children to private schools and the government is creating a situation whereby marginalised children will end up not accessing quality education.

It will be the preserve of those from rich backgrounds.

Pupils are unhappy with an ongoing salary impasse which the government is failing to tackle, which has forced them to go on strike. The situation will degenerate into chaos if government continues to ignore the plight of teachers. This is what caused the Soweto uprising of 1976 in South Africa, where students protested because they were being ill-treated.

Teachers are not single. They have families to feed and look after. They want to send their children to school and not all teachers have houses. They also want to pay rentals and other bills.

A teachers’ salaries are pathetic, while the Zanu PF-led government officials are busy looting billions of dollars in well-orchestrated scheme to siphon State resources with impunity. Government must address teachers’ grievances so that normalcy can be restored.