Bid to stop Zanu-PF using schools for rallies

Peta Thorncroft

HARARE: Zimbabwe’s rural teachers have gone to the High Court claiming they have proof that the ruling ZanuPF party has used children, schools, equipment and teachers for its political campaigns.

Zimbabwe has simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and local government elections at the end of the month, the first since former president Robert Mugabe was forced by the military to retire from office last November.

The Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, ARTUZ, first went to court last month and won their case, which banned Zanu-PF from using anything to do with schools, including children, for their campaigns to win elections.

Now the teachers say they have returned to court because Zanu-PF appealed the interim order by the High Court.

Zanu-PF claimed in papers submitted to the Supreme Court that the teachers produced no proof of their claim that it forced schoolchildren to attend rallies, or that it used schools and its equipment.

When that appeal was lodged, the High Court ban became immediately irrelevant, and the teachers say schoolchildren were now “vulnerable to political exploitation”.

The teachers say in their papers, submitted to the High Court in Masvingo, about 250km south of Harare, that “the constitutional rights… of minor children are under imminent threat as a direct result of the appeal” by Zanu-PF.

It is seeking that the matter be heard on an “urgent” basis.

The applicants claim that the appeal by Zanu-PF stripped “children and teachers of the protection granted to them” by last month’s order, “leaving them vulnerable to political exploitation” by Zanu-PF.

Many observers, including journalists, have regularly attended rallies or Zanu-PF political events at schools, which are often closed to make way for rallies. Children in school uniforms regularly attend the rallies, as do some teachers.

The new application says rural teachers included substantial photographs and other information to show that ZanuPF continued to use schools, children and teachers for its campaigns, and included “evidence” of violence, which it says affected children at a political rally about 40km west of Harare on July 7. – Independent Foreign Service THE Durban University of Technology (DUT), University of Johannesburg, and the University of Cape Town have teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer a specialised curriculum dedicated to improving cloud computing-focused skills.

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