YOU knock on the publisher’s door and you’re so excited.
You have these magnificent ideas, you have been dreaming about this.
Others have seen the work, they too have been excited, they would love their children to read this.
In fact you have problems tracing the manuscript because it is doing the rounds, friends want it for their children, and so it keeps changing hands.
You enter the editor’s office and something warns you not to be too cosy.
You suppress the premonition and you bravely tell him your story, you pass him the work you have written and tell him how many others have loved it so much.
He takes it into his hands dispassionately turns the pages, “oh yes, oh well, we are no longer doing short stories, novellas, novels, ordinary books and so on.
“These are hard times, unless it is something that can be made into a textbook, then we are assured of sales, you see for instance if you did a biography of a great hero, something like that, we are sure sooner or later it will be a required text.”
He rumbles on and you are already cold, also angry.
But he is oblivious to it.
After sometime, his voice breaks through.
“Of course if you can pay for the publishing, if you meet your own.”
And something in you decides enough is enough.
“Thank you sir, I am running behind time, I have an appointment,” you politely excuse yourself.
You collect your manuscript and beat the dust off your feet and leave.
So this is what it has come to.
This is what it has deteriorated to since the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education stopped producing its own teaching and learning materials for the schools, years ago.
The elephant is dead and all knives are out to get a piece of the meat.
Longman struck gold in 2011 when David Coltart secured funding for its publications to get into schools.
What was the criteria for choosing Longman?
Are the Longman books the best textbooks for our children and Zimbabwe?
The ministry, the other publishers, and the schools know the answer, so does Coltart.
In this rat race who is the winner, certainly not the children of Zimbabwe and since it is not the children of Zimbabwe, then what is it all about and what is the source of legitimacy.
In the last few months in this very series, we have analysed textbooks that are in no way beneficial to the children of Zimbabwe or Zimbabwe, books which talk about the Independence of Zimbabwe without mentioning from who, without talking about the bitter armed struggle to free the country from British colonialism.
By refraining from naming Britain as the former colonial power that cost the blood of thousands of Zimbabwean, exonerates it of such grave culpability, and disarms Zimbabwe’s children, leaving them so vulnerable to re-colonisation by Britain and other imperialist powers.
The treatment of Zimbabwe’s independence in one such book is so hostile that instead of ending the chapter with the country’s national anthem, it concludes it with a strange European song.
This denigration of the country’s independence did not spare the struggle for liberation, where it went as far as to depict female freedom fighters as prostitutes. These are issues which matter to each Zimbabwean child.
These children are the heirs of this great land and if their heritage is soiled, how can they wear the mantle with pride.
Our analysis also revealed that European history is given primacy over African history.
It also exposed the racism in the so acclaimed Sunrise Readers.
Thus we asked above “who is the winner in this rat race?”
And we rightly answered, “neither the Zimbabwean child nor Zimbabwe”.
How do such books go through and remain in the classroom year after year?
Some of them obviously because of Coltart’s own agenda, but what about the rest before Coltart’s time.
Hence we have also asked what this business is all about.
Money at the expense of the Zimbabwean child and Zimbabwe?
Is this what epitomises the best that Zimbabwe can produce?
After how many Book Fairs, how many Indabas’ and writers’ workshops?
Where is the soul of Zimbabwe in such texts?
The textbook world being so desolate, where shall our children find solace?
If so much that is wonderful cannot be published unless it can be made into a textbook where will the children find wonderful stories to read as they bask in the sun, rest in the shade, relax between classes, enjoy that special afternoon in the library or stretch their legs after washing the plates?
Where will they find material to enrich themselves, to read when they need space to be at peace by reading something special, when they need to dream and wonder, to visit vistas to inspire them, ensconce the beautiful, the challenging and mature into the best they can be?
Is this a plot to suppress production of Zimbabwean reading materials for children so as to continue to promote the Sunrise Readers, to import books such as Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, and Cinderella?
Why a children’s reading tent where children can be read to by authors while at the same time strangling talent that is struggling to get to the children by publishing only textbook materials.
Where do the budding writers go with their creations?
The cost of printing is prohibitive, it is not only those who have made it or have money who have talent.
God’s gifts tend to ignore these earthly parameters.
The ministry long abandoned the Creative Writers Series which had full funding to produce reading materials by Zimbabwean writers for all our children from the Zambezi to the Limpopo.
Who will take care of our children?
Our children have a right to expect this of the ministry tasked to see to their education.
They have a right to expect this of their Zimbabwe.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.