EDUCATION with production is a culture, it is a way of life. It is a culture which embodies that recognition that I am my own master, I own my destiny, I determine what path my life shall take, no odds are greater than me. Below is just one of the best examples of what this means.
In January 1982, the school term started at Dean-Field Farm which had been bought by Government for resettlement of the pupils. There were no school buildings, no teachers’ houses, no kitchen, no dining hall. There were 950 boys and girls on an open farm.
We faced immense problems of accommodation in the rain season, plus those of sanitation, food and water.
Simultaneously we constructed pole and thatch classrooms, pole and thatch teachers’ houses, pole and thatch headmaster’s house and pole and thatch clinic. Through hard work we accomplished what looked to be impossible. By the end of four weeks we had enough pole and thatch dormitories and classrooms for all our pupils and housing for most of our teachers.
We also had piped water and sufficiently good sanitation. By the end of March all the dormitory-classrooms had electricity in them. Before the completion of our classrooms, most of our lessons were conducted in the open under shady trees. (As they had done during the liberation struggle)
In addition to high morale, a high level of political understanding guided us in our struggle. It was clear to everyone – teacher and pupil that the country had just gone through a gruelling period of war. This was a period of reconstruction and we were therefore playing our part in the reconstruction effort. Often we reminded ourselves of the motto: Let us fight and rebuild Zimbabwe. The fighting had been done successfully and we were now at the stage of rebuilding.
We did not mean to stay in these bad conditions indefinitely. The proper school was going to be built by ourselves, and we started digging foundations for classrooms and in July the first brick was laid. We realised our building skills were very limited and we were therefore going to do only those aspects of the work we could do efficiently. Qualified builders were hired to do the bricklaying while we moulded bricks.
About 400 000 bricks were moulded.
Tonnes of vegetables were produced, 1 000 bags of maize, 100 bags of sorghum 140 bags wheat were produced.
In December, we geared ourselves to occupy our new classrooms and dormitories which we did in January 1983. We now have a beautiful school, which is a product of the hard work of everyone who was involved in the project. (Stephen Nyengera- Headmaster 1982).
This is how Nkululeko Secondary School began, one of Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production schools set up to pioneer education with production with the pupils and teachers from the schools in the struggle who already had been practising this concept of education in Mozambique and Zambia.
These pupils and their teachers were able to accomplish so much in only one year, because during the liberation struggle they had been cultured in the ethos which said: “We are our own liberators.”
They did not cry: “Oh we left for the struggle, and suffered so much in the war, why should we continue to suffer, we should be given a brand new school with all the comfort to compensate for our sufferings in the struggle.”
These children of the struggle did not ask for anything, they accepted to rebuild Zimbabwe with their own hands, they trusted the wisdom of the Government and party in not putting them in luxurious edifices but to continue to culture them in the ethos of the struggle which said: “We are our own masters and with our own hands, we shall transform our circumstances’, and as Freire said: “I work and working I transform the world.”
During the struggle they had built their own barracks, toilets, cooked their food, produced their own food whenever it was possible and when they came home they did not shun this culture of education with production and in one year they had built their own school and produced tonnes of food.
These are the kinds of young people with whom you can build a nation.
This is the ethos and spirit which the Zimbabwe Government sought to nurture in all Zimbabwean children when they set up ZIMFEP, the foundation for education with production. Nkululeko was a proud product of this great Government initiative.
It is the work of our hands which transforms our material circumstances for the better. Without that we condemn ourselves to sell our mineral resources to buy what others produce with their own hands.
Thirty-six (36) years after independence, the mothers and grandmothers still light their cooking at night with a piece of flaming fire wood or chibani, they still walk miles to bring home a bucket of water to meet the needs of five people, for cooking, drinking, bathing and laundry, they still blow the fire with their breath until tears stream down their cheeks, until their eyes are red and sore from the smoke, they still cook in the blazing heat, sweat streaming down their faces,nothing ameliorates their circumstances.
They worked this hard, suffered this much as they cooked for the liberation forces, as they fended for their families before liberation; they still suffer this much, they still have this much hardship 36 years after independence.
They still live mostly in their pole and thatch hats, they still sleep on the hard floor. It is fair to ask: “If 950 pupils and teachers can achieve this much in only one year how is that the life of the masses still lacks these basics everyone is entitled to, how can it still remain like this 36 years later, after so many years of science and technology universities, technical colleges, teachers and agricultural colleges, thousands of schools times that many years? Why have things remained this way despite an army of graduates which is thousands strong?”
Clearly it is not a question of more and more science, more and more universities and colleges, it is a question of which science and for what purpose, it is a question of a clear definition of what these universities and colleges shall do for the ordinary Zimbabwean kumusha uko that is where the majority of them are found.
The sun blazes over the Zimbabwe sky 365 days a year and yet our mothers cannot even have the comfort of solar energy to light the nights so that they can see what they are cooking, so they can light where they are sleeping, so that the young ones can read and do their homework without damaging their eyes nezvibani.
In the struggle the children learned: “None but ourselves!” This is the only way we can take care of our people.