Early every morning a chauffeur-driven car delivers Robert Mugabe's youngest
son, Bellarmine, to Hartmann House, the prep school for St George's College,
the oldest and most prestigious private boys' school in Zimbabwe.
Young Master Mugabe wears a red cap and blazer, just like the 350 other boys
whose parents spend nearly US$1,000 a term — a small fortune in Zimbabwe —
to attend the elite institution with its tree-lined drives and acres of
verdant cricket fields in central Harare. Only the permanent presence of two
bodyguards sets him apart from his peers.
Bellarmine's enrolment, and that of the sons of two other Zanu (PF) ministers,
does not thrill Brendan Tiernan, who has spent 28 years teaching at St
George's and is now its headmaster. He finds it hard to accept that these
boys should be receiving such a fine and expensive education at a time when
the Mugabe regime has all but destroyed Zimbabwe's once-proud public schools
system.
“I'm surprised their parents would be willing to preside over the awful
collapse of education in this country given how highly they value it for
their own children,” he told The Times. “It's problematic for
me.”
Mr Tiernan's discomfort is easy to understand. Not many years ago Zimbabwe
boasted the highest educational standards in Africa. Its literacy rate
rivalled America's and 96 per cent of its children attended school. Much of
the credit for that enviable record belonged to Mr Mugabe, who began his
career as a teacher, earned half a dozen degrees during 11 years of
imprisonment by the Rhodesian authorities, and lavished attention on
Zimbabwe's schools in the early years of independence.
Today that education system has collapsed almost as completely as Zimbabwe's
once celebrated health, agricultural and industrial sectors. Of its 130,000
teachers, roughly 60,000 have left the country, the profession or both
because hyperinflation rendered their salaries worthless. Of the rest, most
are now on strike, demanding payment in foreign currency. The majority of
the country's 6,000 schools either failed to reopen when term belatedly
began last week, or are catering only for the few whose parents can scrape
together US dollars to pay the teachers.
It seems scarcely possible but Zimbabwe's 3.5million schoolchildren are likely
to receive even less education this year than last when strikes, elections
and violence meant they spent an average of 27 days at school, and their O
levels and A levels went unmarked. The Government now spends just 18 US
cents a child on education, meaning Mr Mugabe spends more on educating
Bellarmine each term than his Government spends on 5,000 ordinary
schoolchildren in a year.
“The system is in tatters... A generation is at risk of growing up without any
education,” said Rachel Pounds, Save the Children's country director.
“Education is the engine that drives Zimbabwe's future and that future is
now at risk,” said Tsitsi Singizi, Unicef's spokeswoman in Harare, adding
that a quarter of Zimbabwe's children are orphans and schools provide
priceless protection against exploitation and abuse.
The Education Ministry seems unconcerned. It convened a meeting of
international donors and NGOs at the Sheraton hotel in Harare last week then
failed to send a single representative. “It's outrageous. The future of
Zimbabwe's children is just not important to them,” complained one Western
official.
In the slums of southern Harare yesterday, barely five miles from the
manicured grounds of Hartmann House, ragged, barefooted children who should
have been at school played in rutted streets lined by mounds of rotting
garbage. Lucia and Linda Madzise, aged 13 and 9, were looking after their
three-year-old brother Maxwell. They used to attend Chitsere primary school
but have not been since August last year and now the only pupils who still
go are those whose parents could raise US$10 a term. Many mornings, said
Lucia, she and her sister put on their faded checked cotton uniforms and
went anyway “but we're always turned away”.
The Times found Janet Chimnadza leaving Highfield secondary school with
her identical twin daughters, Lisa and Leosa, both 12 and wearing their
primary school uniforms. Since 6am, and on each of the past five days, they
had been walking around the city, looking for a secondary school that was
still open and would accept the twins without charging. “It's very painful.
Sometimes I cry. I'm very, very worried about their future,” Mrs Chimnadza
said. “It's what we want most of all,” the girls replied when asked how
badly they wanted to go to school.
In a primary school that once had 1,400 pupils and 40 staff, a headmaster, who
asked to remain nameless, sat alone with his deputy in his spartan office,
watched over by a portrait of Mr Mugabe. “Right now we don't have a single
teacher,” he said.
His own salary last month was Z$42trillion — roughly US$2 at that time. Even
if the children were to return, the school had no chalk, stationery, working
telephones or useable toilets. Outside his window the sports field was
waist-high in grass.
“I'm sad and angry,” he said. “We used to have very good education in
Zimbabwe. We were very committed to our work but today you ask why you
should work if you're not paid.”
The headmaster will soon have to retire at 65, but his pension will be
worthless. “I'll go home and wait to die,” he said.
The priveleged classes
— Founded in 1957, Hartmann House is on the same site as St
George’s College, Harare, not far from Zimbabwe House, the President’s
official residence
— The school’s aim is “to form true men, as good in the classroom
as in the field, who will hold their places in the world and be leaders of
men”
Source: St George’s College
