The eighth wonder of Zimbabwe

13 Dec, 2019 - 00:12 0 Views
The eighth wonder of Zimbabwe

The ManicaPost

Morris Mtisi Education Correspondent
THERE are seven wonders of the world. Name them if you can. Good! Likewise there are also seven wonders of Zimbabwe. These are the Vic Falls, Hwange National Park, Lake Kariba, Mana Pools, the Mighty Zambezi, Chilojo Cliffs and the Eastern Highlands. Those who are endowed with an inborn taste for tourist attractions can find out why each of these is a wonder.

This article points to the eighth wonder of Zimbabwe of my mind.

When schools closed at the end of 2019 and time came for parents to look for ECD A and B places the ugly or beautiful head of the eighth wonder surfaced, depending on which side of the river one stood.

This reporter did not believe any of the grapevine whispers until his own grandson looked for an ECD place in one of the schools around Mutare. He was shocked. That is what wonders do. They shock you, whichever side of surprise or disbelief one may be.

The list of demands from the school was astonishing, for lack of a better word. The two- page list may have fascinated some parents. It kicked me in the teeth. Apart from the list of textbooks . . . so-called work books, five of them, at $77 (RTGS) in the shops, the new learner-sized computer specified “160 set functions learning machine’” and learner-sized guitar, specified “six strings-50 centimetres” for each child were flabbergasting. What is this world coming to? To an end?

From the many items that were demanded you would think one was stocking a little shop . . . crayons, glue, files, beads, scissors, paint and bond paper. There were school uniforms specified “Summer Wear” and “Winter Wear”. Take note, the summer wear was demanded in November-December for May-June the following year. And you begin to wonder if you are at a school or some crazy place somewhere in the gehena called hell. Oh, I had forgotten one ball per child specified “plastic leather” . . . whatever kind of material that is.

Even when the world’s greatest musical bands started . . . The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and even Michael Jackson much later on in the history of music, did they demand a guitar from every member who wanted to pursue a musical career? Astonishing, is it not? Even when the Ronaldos, Lionel Messis and the Peles (of time immemorial), did they have to bring each a leather ball to begin pursuing careers in football? This world never ceases to amaze!

The school heads (of course not all of them) using a network team of very mean, callous, heartless teachers-in-charge with parsimonious, penny-pinching and shameless personalities, harassed parents left, right and centre. They treated them as if they owned the schools some to such an extent you would easily think they were ministers and mistresses of education. Did you get the part I said, “. . . not all of them”? Of course, not all of them, but many enough to be a stinking bother! Even legitimate school owners (independent and private) did not and do not treat parents in this spiteful way.

As if all the ugliness and craziness that went on in the hands of forbidding and unpleasant school heads and special corruption teams were not enough, it was the total sum of the RTGS dollars needed by each parent for each child. The one list that The Manica Post is in possession of added up to plus or minus $4 000 (RTGS) without the school fees.

If ECD learning costs $4 000 per child, four to five times more than one semester at university, which is (or  was) $900 to $1 000, is that not a jolting wonder? These figures may or probably are not dead accurate to the last zero, but anybody with average intelligence sees the disturbing point without struggling. ECD . . . three to four times more costly than university tuition fees! If that is not a wonder, as wonderful as Mana Pools, the Mighty Zambezi or Vic Falls, show me one!

The question is: “Is it the new curriculum creating this senseless jolt or it is its abuse, exploitation or misunderstanding or everything put together?” Is ECD really as costly as this, or some people or schools                 . . .  even those few school heads are corruptly embedded in a scheme to make dirty money from suffering and innocent parents?

Criminals who are involved in this foul exploitation of poor parents in the guise of the new curriculum must know that the writing is on the wall. Walls have ears and their days are numbered. The long arm of the law will soon catch up with them. Nothing kills progress more than the poor abusing the poor in Africa. Nothing mires, dirties or muddies the African waters more than filthy corruption in every situation and circumstance. When people begin to speak, they have decided to pay whatever it costs to root out corruption from our midst. For corruption to be mitigated, people must speak, expose it and damn the consequences.

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