Are Zimbos Too Educated for Nothing?

Over Easter, I had a chance meeting with a 63-year old man in Harare CBD who was livid at the state of his domestic affairs.

“I am 63 years old, I’m supposed to resting but I am still looking after three of my children who are old enough to be fathers. I can’t chase them away; I just have to look after them,” he said shrugging his shoulders in apparent exasperation.

He said all his male children were educated and had certificates to prove it but no jobs unlike his female children who are now married to successful man.

“Just getting educated to get an office job just doesn’t cut it nowadays. You need to be hands on. We cannot all do office jobs. What people need nowadays is vocational education,” he said.

He added that what he observed during the past decade of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis is that his female children managed to cope because they could use their hands to create things that could earn them an income.

Our conversation went on and on. My new found friend was quite unhappy about the state of affairs.

Zimbabwe, with an unemployment rate of above 90 per cent, is looking for ways to recover from its decade long political and economic fallout. One of the key elements of that recovery will be how the country utilises its human capacity.

While most Zimbabweans have a certificate of some sort, the country’s educational system has tended to focus more on the theoretical building a workforce that is able to read, write and follow instructions at the expense of being creative, hands-on and innovative. Too many of us have a lot of book learning devoid of any capability.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject which is so close to my heart: do you think our educational system has truly benefited you or its just a charade. A much ado about nothing.

Zimbabwe Yet to Tap into Full Potential of Mobile Telephony

By Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha | Global Editor At Large

For generations, rural people in Zimbabwe have lived in complete isolation without much access to information and means of communication. Yet access to information is one of the single most important facilitators of development.

Today, mobile telephony is penetrating Zimbabwe at the speed of lightning enhancing the level of communication but the question is will it facilitate the process of development in rural areas.

The country’s mobile phone industry has already been projected to reach 13,5 million subscribers in 2015 and worth a phenomenal US 1,34 billion by 2016, according to IE Market Research (IEMR) and the growth partnership company Frost & Sullivan (F&S), respectively.

Projections are that Zimbabwe will have universal mobile connection by 2014, and with demand for voice services increasingly met, future growth is predicted to occur around data and broadband provision.

According to Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the mobile ecosystem in Africa generates about US$56bn or 3,5% of total GDP, with mobile operators alone contributing US$49bn.

“The mobile industry in Africa is booming and a catalyst for immense growth, but there is scope for far greater development,” said Peter Lyons, a GSMA policy expert.

In fact, the World Bank estimates that in developing countries, for every 10 percent increase in mobile penetration there is a 0.81 percent increase in GDP.

While Africa has been described as the Silicon Valley of cell phones because of the innovative ways they are used on the continent, in Zimbabwe, we are still to tap into the full potential of the mobile phone.

Zimbabwe has largely tapped into the text and voice capacity of the mobile phone. And the introduction of mobile money has also expanded the scope of what the mobile phone can offer.

Even with mobile money, there is still a need to broaden the financial services that can be availed via mobile. With better investments and innovation, Zimbabwe can provide healthcare and education to its people and drive an increase in the economic wealth and development through the mobile.

Other areas that can benefit from mobile innovation include education and employment, agriculture, cultural and social aspects, natural resource conservation, and addressing overall rural development concerns.

Nurturing the spirit of innovation and creativity is a prerequisite to developing key mobile solutions. Such solutions should be able to deal with local contexts and local issues. They should be relevant to local problems and concerns but at the same time they should naturally lend themselves to adaptability and scalability. Overall, the aim of mobile solutions should be to help the community to develop socially, economically and culturally.

Why Revisiting Our Zim Mis-Education Matters

By Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha | Global Editor At Large

AS Zimbabweans, we carry the tag that we are amongst some of the world’s most educated and literate with pomp and pride. It is something that most of us always like to brag about.

But fact of the matter is that our highly regarded educational status is much like a gong in the wind. We have very little to show for all the long rolls of degrees and certificates that we have accumulated over the years.

It appears that our education is good for a showcase. Certainly, it has helped many of us speak well polished English but outside that there is zilch: it’s like shells and corpses. Much ado about nothing. We have become individuals of “distorted tastes, confused perception and resultless energy.”

The education that we are so proud of has largely resulted in the inhibition and domestication of the intentionality of our consciousness – in the process – deterring us from becoming fully human.

If anything, our so-called education has reduced most of us to become alienated functionaries with little originality and innovativeness to address the most significant social, political and economic problems in our communities.

For all our long educational degrees, we have no knowledge of our own customs and traditions. We know zilch about our culinary arts and folks or achievements that our people have made in the past. All these things contain coded messages that if properly decoded can help to reshape our philosophical worldview providing us with confidence to deal with our conditions in our own unique way.

Put simply, our education has only served us to fit neatly into some proletariat structure without equipping us with the tools, knowledge and skills required to reshape our historical circumstances. Instead, it instils within most of us a profound sense of alienation from our communities nurturing a split personality.

Essentially, our educational system has alienated us from our ontology or sense of being a human being. What has been planted has given birth to a duality of some sort where the so-called educated’s essential sense of being is often suppressed by the acquired education. Yet that acquired education is not sufficient enough to held the individual to influence the reality round them.

For progress’s sake, we need to rediscover our consciousness apart from the education that has been implanted in us. We need an educational system that takes into account our own view of the world and equips us with tools to shape those viewpoints. We need to undergo an educational rehabilitation process of some sort that repositions us as the centre of our being and instils confidence within us to influence the conditions of our lives.

Of course, one cannot talk of Zimbabwe’s education without referring to colonialism which sought to superimpose its systems upon us. But this realisation should even make it more urgent to engage in authentic re-acculturation.

In TB Fight, Children Must Be a Priority

 

HARARE, Zimbabwe – TB mostly affects the world’s poorest; among those, the most vulnerable are children. Despite that an estimated 500,000 new annual cases of children with tuberculosis (TB), there are no appropriate medicines for them according to UNITAID and the TB Alliance.

TB, one of the world’s most neglected diseases with almost no new treatments developed in the past 50 years, is one of the top ten causes of childhood death. According to WHO, Tuberculosis (TB) often goes undiagnosed in children from birth to 15 years old because they lack access to health services – or because the health workers who care for them are unprepared to recognize the signs and symptoms of TB in this age group.

With no alternatives available, treatment providers for children are forced to adapt medicines for adults as best they can, such as by cutting pills. This leads to improper treatment, treatment failure, spread of this highly-contagious disease, and conditions ripe for the development of drug-resistant strains of the bacteria.

“Despite the world’s capabilities to address this disease, pediatric tuberculosis has been ignored for far too long, resulting in a complete lack of appropriate medicines,” said Denis Broun, Executive Director of UNITAID.

The extent of the childhood TB pandemic is not fully understood. Most experts believe that TB in children goes largely undiagnosed and that the true scope of the problem is far higher than the estimates today.

Childhood tuberculosis is estimated to constitute about 6% out of all incident cases, with the majority of cases occurring in high TB burden countries. 

“Developing treatments for children with TB is an urgent humanitarian imperative,” said Mel Spigelman, M.D., President and CEO of TB Alliance. “An appropriate formulation for the decades-old drugs is not even available. We need to immediately rectify the situation for the present drugs, and also ensure that the improved treatments in the pipeline will be developed for children soon after they are approved for adults.”

In 2010, the World Health Organization released new guidelines for pediatric drugs. However, to date, no quality-assured products have been produced to these specifications.

World TB Day, March 24, commemorates the day in 1882 that Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus, the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis. Since that discovery, progress against the disease has surged and ebbed. Now with outbreaks of more deadly forms of TB, documented around the world, it’s time to help protect children from this disease.

Why I Voted “Yes” for A New Zimbabwe Constitution

UNTIL an hour before casting my vote in the just concluded referendum on Zimbabwe’s draft constitution held on March 16, I was in a serious quandary whether to cast my vote at all, to vote “NO” or to vote “Yes”. At the end of the day, I decided to exercise my right to vote and participated in the referendum with an affirmative vote. And here is the reason why.

First of all, I strongly felt that the process of drafting the constitution itself had been exclusionary, designed to serve political interests at best. I also felt that the draft constitution left quite a lot of things hanging and did little to capture the ideal of being that we are seeking as a people. Like many other people, I felt the document was not representative enough. But, at the same time, it introduced some seriously progressive things among others, better recognition of local languages and women.

As I wrangled with myself, I came to the conclusion that nothing in life ever comes neatly packaged. If it were like that there would be no need for constitution writing in the first place. The constitution is only the beginning of a long journey. And besides a constitution is not set in stone.

It’s an ever living document that will change with time and season. Even the so-called progressive constitutions of the world have been a product of political compromise. The key however is respect of the constitution. Having a clean cut and well polished constitution is not the be and end all of everything. The leaders’ and the people have to have it within themselves to respect the constitution.

The constitution alone can never resolve the fundamental problems and ills that we are facing as a nation. As a friend of mine put it, ” … we the people make the constitution relevant or irrelevant, useful or useless … we must therefore vigilantly, relentlessly and strictly obey, enforce, uphold and defend our new national constitution if it’s to be relevant and useful.”

And so I voted “Yes” because of the glimmer that the new constitution encompassed which I felt can push Zimbabwe forward and make it become a part of the community of nations. For the past decade – ominously since another failed attempt to draft a new constitution – Zimbabwe has been stuck in a limbo. We have lost a decade to political bickering, violence and name-calling. Any opportunity that promises changed must be grabbed with both hands as they say in Zimbabwe.

Why I cast my vote in the after therefore is because I believe in Zimbabwe and in my fellow citizens’ ability to negotiate for a better future. I believe what we needed was a way to just get out of the current rut so that we can begin to see thing a little clearly. Perhaps only then can we build the Zimbabwe we want and make it great again.

Do Women Really Hate Each Other?

ARE women hard on each other? Do women sabotage each other so much that it damages any effort at their collective advancement? Is it fair to say that even if government puts in place policies or programmes to help women progress, this won’t really help because of the rage that women have against each other?

It’s been talked about a lot, mostly in private spaces, in fact, women hating against women is an open secret in our society, so to speak. It’s a view that most people instinctively agree with. Most of us have heard of the proverbial mother-in-law versus daughter in law fights. But what is most surprising is that women hating on each is not only in Zimbabwe, it appears its a global phenomena.

Take the US, for example: according to a recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute, women bully other women at work — verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority, and destroying of relationships — more than 70 percent of the time.

Another study by Business Environment, Women are their own worst enemies in business with 25 per cent of female managers admitting they are reluctant to hire a woman who has children or is of a child-bearing age.

As well as discriminating against those with children, many female managers also admitted to judging women staff on how they dressed.

One of the reasons given for women hating on each other is that their evaluation of other women is largely shaped by a male worldview. That is to say women judge other women based on standards and norms developed by men.

There is also a general notion that women don’t like to be outdone by other women whether it be about simple things such as the way dressing or level of success. Add to this, a sense of female success is based on subjective, biased, external validation by others. Consequently, women compete with each other for male attention and compliments as if it feeds their self-worth and self-esteem.

So what do you think? Is is true that women hate on each other? Is it true that women always seem to think other women have underlying motives, and the natural defenses are always up? What has been your experience, and what needs to happen to change this?

Young Zimbos Opt for Smaller Families

By Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha | Global Editor At Large

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Maidei Tikiwa, 26, of Chitungwiza has three children. Hararian, Tambudzai Chikanga, 28, has two. For Shamiso Dube, 30, of Mutare, it’s three. Ruvimbo Mazani, of Tafara, has four.

Blessing Chitambo, 20, wanted two – and got them when her twin boys, Tafadzwa and Tafara, were born four year ago.

“I have always wanted to have two children, that’s something I agreed with my huaband. Two is very normal,” said Chitambo.

Traditionally, six has been the number of children favoured by most Zimbabweans. But the ideal family size appears to have gone through a shift.

Nowadays, deciding how many kids to have isn’t as easy as settling on a magic number, especially against a background of a tough economy, increased educational opportunities for women and increased job demands.

In the past, the number of children that couples chose to have was often determined by household workloads. Hence, couples opeted to have big families in order to secure labourers.

However, today’s parents are increasingly facing a lot of things that need to be balanced. Young couples intend on having children (and those that are looking to have children someday) have to balance school, career choices and relationships. What is interesting is that, unlike in the past, there is now little extended family influence in making decisions about family size.

“It’s now a very personal decision how many children I’m going to have. It’s something that my husband and I have already decided. However, I can’t say what we decide should be a straight-jacket for all,” said Mazani, who added that she and her huband, Tawanda, talked extensively about how many kids they wanted to have.

James Sitiya, 32, who is planning to get married next year, said the choice of a partner largely determines the number of children.

“I think the more educated we become, the less children we opt to have. I see it among most of my friends that are married – three is the highest number of children that most are opting for. It’s just an imperative that one has to balance career development with starting a family,” he said.

In the twentieth century, the typical Zimbabwean woman had six to ten children. During that time, children were largely seen as an asset. Children were regarded as a resource that could be put to work. Parent expected their children to look after them when they were old. Very little money was spent on the education of children, particulalrly, girls.

More recently, children are now seen as an investment. There is an increasing realization among younger Zimbabweans that children require investment in order to have a successful adulthood.

It is proving more difficult financially and logistically to have more children nowadays. Howvever, there is some clear brainwashing that two children, especially if it’s a boy and a girl, is the perfect size for a family. That message is hammered via advertising.

Whatever the case, what is apparent is that Zimbabwe’s family size has significantly shrunk. Two seems to be taking hold, and it’s not surprsing given that it takes appromixately US$200,000 to rear a child from age zero to 18.