SCHOOLS have opened and the week has been characterised by a struggle between parents, the Ministry of Education, and school authorities.
Poor parents have sent children back to school without fees.
School authorities have demanded cash up-front and barred children who have not paid fees from classes, arguing that non-payment of school fees compromises efficient running of schools.
Schools authority is vested in Parents-Teachers Associations.
The Ministry of Education has said that no child should be sent home for non-payment of fees because education is every child’s constitutional right.
The majority of the school-fees paying parents are living below the poverty datum line.
Protracted negotiations between Government and civil servants saw the salary of the civil servant being pegged below the poverty datum line.
In a reflection of maturity that has baffled the Western regime-change international community, the civil servants accepted the Government explanation that the fledgling economy could not sustain salaries above the poverty datum line.
With the least paid civil servant earning US$375 and teachers earning US$500 the associated challenges are irrefutable.
The following is a rough monthly budget for an average family of five and it reflects the desperate challenges faced by parents and grandparents who sustained the liberation struggle with the hope of avoiding such challenges:
Food US$200
Transport US$30
Rent, Rates and Electricity US$170
Medical Aid US$60
Total US$460
It is clear that survival on the civil servant wage is a big challenge.
In simpler terms, the civil servants were persuaded to live on a shoe string budget in order to save the Government of the people from collapse.
And, it is of course not the first time black Zimbabweans have been persuaded to die for the general good.
That is how Zimbabwe was won.
The people who fought for Zimbabwe had the choice to be freedom fighters sustained by a shoe string budget funded by well-wishers or mercenaries and puppets living it up on borrowed time.
The majority of course chose the hard road to freedom and sustained the liberation struggle nehuku, netwumari twekusungirira.
Once when asked if he would consider inviting foreigners to fight for Zimbabwe in the same manner Angolans had invited Cubans, President Robert Mugabe asked where then the pride would be for having fought for and won our independence.
He said what he needed were the weapons and rear bases, and the rest was up to us because the fight was ours.
The liberation war song: “Tipeiwochimoto/ huni tinonodziwanira ikoko kuZimbabwe,” is a record of that stance.
Among other objectives, the hope for the struggling masses was of course for the inalienable right to education; not just the part of the education they had themselves abandoned to wage the struggle, but education as an eternal heritage for infinite generations deriving from the fighting generation.
Given the foregoing stance, the current stand-off between the poor parents who sustained the liberation struggle, the Government that was born out of that liberation struggle and the schools that were made possible by that liberation struggle is a far cry from the expectations of the masses that struggled for it.
On the one hand, the problem looks complicated.
Civil servant wages are not a secret to the Government that pegged them below the poverty-datum line.
Parents-Teachers Associations running public schools are constituted by beneficiaries of the meagre Government wages and they know the limits to which the wages can be stretched to accommodate the fees without which the schools can operate.
It is clearly a desperate catch-22 situation which the Minister of Education has tried to wriggle out of by telling desperate schools to approach the courts for the recovery of un-paid fees which desperate parents living below the poverty-datum line cannot sustain.
And the same courts are the custodians of the people’s constitution that makes education every child’s inalienable right.
On the other hand, when one considers that in the ultimate sense, what was liberated for communal benefit were the natural resources of Zimbabwe, the solution to the school fees crisis seems hidden in open sight.
It is the liberated natural resources that must pay for the education of Zimbabwean children.
The foreign companies that are exploiting our natural resources must pay school fees for all children attending public schools.
Those mining diamonds, platinum, gold etc. must be asked to pay the fees.
If they do not want, they must be forced and if they resist, then they must be thrown out.
This is not extremism.
It is not even extreme common sense.
It is the only logical way forward.
Zimbabwe’s communal heritage must serve communal interests!