TWO weeks ago, ZBC TV, as many times before, highlighted the plight of pupils in Matabeleland South whose parents cannot afford to pay fees.
The exhortation was that parents should sacrifice for their children so that they do not drop out and join the endless trek to Egoli where, because of the very elementary levels at which they drop out of school, they can only be employed as labourers doing menial tasks.
The foundation for education in Zimbabwe was laid during the liberation struggle where it was decided that our children would not be raised to be exploited labour for others.
In our society, before the coming of the British armed robbers, no-one was someone’s exploited labour.
Each family unit owned its own means of production, cattle and land.
The law of the land required that the rulers afford each man who came of age a piece of land, thus it was guaranteed that each family head would have a piece of land without fail.
By the time one got married, each man had a herd of cattle, so he could provide for the family. If not, there were various means that made it possible for one to till the land even if he had no cattle of his own.
Male or female, one would always have goats, sheep and chickens, even cattle. In the land noone was without some form of wealth, people were thus self-sufficient.
This self-sufficiency is why it was critical for the British armed robbers to break the economy by seizing the best land on which the people subsisted and relegate them to arid and semi-arid lands in the process, seizing hundreds of thousands of their cattle, goats and sheep.
In breaking it, they created the necessity for our people to participate in their cut-throat economy, the capitalist economy.
The white-man looted gold and other precious minerals, while appropriating existing mines. In the end all the major sources of subsistence and wealth belonged to the whiteman, the people were at his mercy. This new man-made poverty saw our people at the beck-and-call of the whiteman.
Had the people still been in possession of their herds, their rich flourishing lands, their gold mines, the whiteman would have had to buy their cattle, produce and gold, and so they would never have had to work for the whiteman but instead they were dispossessed of everything so they had to work for the armed robbers.
The whiteman had usurped power through the barrel of the gun, but the robbery was not complete without the take-over of the essential means of livelihood — land, cattle and precious minerals like gold.
In cases where the people did not offer themselves to work for the whiteman, they were conscripted to work as forced labourers in mines and construction projects such as bridges, thus our people became slaves.
This is how the capitalist economy was created and entrenched; the schooling for Africans was tailor-made for this.
The African children were schooled to service this capitalist economy as exploited labourers at various levels. They were never to own means of production in any form; land or the industries.
Ownership was exorcised out of their psyche, totally. This was done so effectively that the prospect of ownership outside being petty traders frightens us out of our wits, it literally traumatises most of us Africans.
This is why, in our liberation struggle in both ZANU and ZAPU, it was decided that Zimbabwe’s children should not be raised to be anyone’s exploited labour, hence their schools in the struggle were education with production-centred. The children were trained to be producers, they were apprenticed to be entrepreneurs.
From inception, these schools refused to depended on donations. Whatever they could produce themselves to ameliorate their material conditions, they did.
Together with their teachers, the learners built their classrooms, their barracks, the postos, they grew their vegetables, sewed their uniforms, made their own shoes, made beautiful bamboo furniture, made their own chalk boards, entertained themselves with home-made banchos, plays and traditional dances, made their own beds and embroidered their own ceilings with sack cloth.
The children in the struggle embraced the concept of self-reliance and engaged in these activities with cheer; they enjoyed being in control of their lives, they had been taught and they understood the true value of labour.
If children in the struggle could do so much for themselves with so little, how can children in independent Zimbabwe be so stranded to the point of dropping out of school because their parents cannot pay their school fees?
The solution to the school fees problem is in the model from the struggle. Even in the drought prone areas of Zimbabwe, so much can be done.
Parents can donate goats and free range chickens. The school children can look after these and the sales from these can go towards their school fees as well as their other needs at the school.
Free range chickens are easy to raise; they are not prone to diseases; they can subsist on small grains which do well in drought prone areas and they do not need much water. They also quickly multiply, they can breed at least three times a year and can have 10 chicks at a time,(without any technical assistance) and they are far tastier than the broilers.
As well, people love goat meat. Goats multiply very fast too. They can scrounge around for food without much human assistance.
In any area of Zimbabwe there is no shortage of productive activities.
Through these activities, children learn the ethos of life; that to work is to be. As Paulo Freire put it: ‘I work, and working, I transform the world. I create my world, the kind of society I want, I do not depend on others to tell me when to be, what to be or even how to be. I put in place what I need to live, the best way I want, the best way I can’.
Children can engage in village industries, joint ventures with the community, industries that can serve the community by providing goods such as bricks or bread. From their sales they can also purchase a grinding meal which can serve the parents and raise revenue for the students.
The key is that the students need to be running these enterprises, managing them, doing the accounts, servicing and repairing the machines; the grinding machines, sewing machines while participating in the actual production of goods and services.
With the success of these school-based industries, the Ministry of Lands could provide land for expanded farming and other productive activities.
Furthermore,the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production is there to provide advice and assistance.
These activities, these kinds of programmes, have been successfully carried out by Education with Production schools; they have made their own bricks and built their own schools, in their metal work classes they have made window frames and door frames, they have made bread in school bakeries, their grinding mills have served the community. It is possible, there is no need to beg, we have all that it takes in us and among us.
At this time that we celebrate the sacrifice by so many at Chimoio, let us gather all the pearls of knowledge from the struggle and use them to build the Zimbabwe they died for!