The ManicaPost
Wendy Nyakurerwa- Matinde
Editor’s Musings
SOME elucidation is required on a very crucial issue as we get into today’s business so that we speak the same language.
Over the years, a new meaning has been attached to the phrase ‘civil servant’.
When they say Government has awarded a 20 percent salary increment to civil servants, in addition to the salary component that will now come as US$175, that doesn’t mean teachers are the only beneficiaries.
Civil servants are those who are employed by Government; including teachers, the police force, nurses, doctors and soldiers, among many others.
However, whenever a revised remuneration package is announced by Government, some dubious teachers’ unions are often always ready to descend on it and tear it apart.
In other words, those unions are of the opinion that on the entire civil service, teachers are the only ones who are incapacitated.
Let me hasten to say the purpose of this instalment is not to interrogate whether the said incapacitation is imagined or real.
Today we dwell on the group dynamics in the teaching profession.
They apparently are the only ones who are not happy with the school fees provision for their biological children, the USD salary component as well as the transport provision, amongst other incentives recently availed by Government.
I hope you get the drift, dear reader.
Now, Pieter Swarts, a critical thinker who understands human behaviour,talks about false bravado that encourages a belligerent attitude that comes along with slander.
An unhappy employee therefore talks ill of his or her employer and drags his or her feet to work, that is if they even bother to show up.
While Swarts’ work refers to the individual, it can easily be applied to group behaviours, particularly the teachers in question.
For the past year or so, whenever schools open, most teachers are taking the opportunity to remind Government of their incapacitation.
Some do not even bother to report for duty, while others prefer to show up and then drag their feet during official learning time before committing themselves fully to the students who are able to pay for extra lessons.
Very few get down to serious business from the very beginning of the term.
Such recklessness has proven to be very lethal.
In fact, some teachers are currently on suspension after the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education last week placed a moratorium on the absent officials for three months without pay for not reporting for duty.
However, one gets the feeling that the suspended teachers are just victims of a game that is being played at a higher level by their representatives.
The industrial action script, which seems to be repeated whenever Covid-19 subsides and lessons resume, appear to have one common author in the teacher representative unions such that the bulk of the teachers are swayed by the questionable union top dogs whose agenda is more political than professional.
In the recent past, these union front-runners and other civil society organisations’ leaders have been exposed for receiving handsome perks from their handlers for the purposes of mobilising teachers to take part in illegal industrial actions.
This has created a financial gulf between the union leaders who are now leaving the soft life and the teachers they purport to lead.
A few teachers who see through the union leaders’ propaganda and are committed to their work are then considered sell-outs for continuing to report for duty when everyone else has taken heed of their instruction to down tools.
That is the bane of group dynamics.
In as much as human beings have their own individual identities, we yearn to be part of a group, no matter how toxic it might be.
This basic human need is the motivating force behind human behaviour.
It is on the third level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – a need to belong somewhere,to have a family, to be loved, needed, accepted, have friends and also to be respected in our respective communities.
However, developing an identity, or a sense of self that separates one particular teacher from the rest, therefore becomes more salient for members of these unions as their individual opinions and preferred courses of action might be divorced from their union leaders’ prescribed routes.
At the end of the day, everyone is toiling for their respective families and they must decide whether being part of a rebellious group is more important than putting food on the table for the family.
Till next week, let’s chew the cud.
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