Zimbabwe's rural teachers lose their glamour

Zimbabwe's rural teachers lose their glamour

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By Walter Marwizi

AN empty old gourd in his right hand and a home made cigarette (chimonera), in the otherhand, Johannes Meke is a sorrowful sight as he pleads with Ambuya Nemarundwe to give him another cup of the home made brew, popularly known as "seven days".

Meke wants more beer, less than five minutes after downing another gourd he obtained on credit.

"Hamubhadahari imi maticha, munongodusva doro redu mari yacho hamuna (You miserly teachers! You just want beer yet you don't have money) says Ambuya Nemarundwe contemptuously, as she attends to other customers who are evidently having a good time at the homestead.

Meke watches in disbelief as a group of villagers who survive on piecemeal jobs gulp the frothy traditional brew even though they haven't brought a cent today.

All they have simply done is promise Ambuya Nemarundwe that they will bring her money the following day after getting paid.

Only five years ago, the situation would have been different, with Meke getting any quantity of beer he wanted, whether he had cash or not. Then, teachers who were much better paid than most low-income workers in Zimbabwe, hardly went out to the villages scouting for the cheap "seven days".

Instead, they would spend most of their time at rural bottle stores drinking the more expensive clear beer and roasting meat.

Often, some of them would be heard mocking their less educated compatriots as "tuma form four tusina mari"(uneducated Form fours with no money).

Their forays to drinking places, although irregular, generated a lot of excitement with villagers jostling to court favours of people who were held in high esteem because of their percieved intellectual prowess.

But how things have changed.

Earning a basic salary of $670 000 a month, teachers in Zimbabwe are now among the low-income earners in the country and many of them are virtually living from hand to mouth.

This reality is more visible in rural areas where teachers were prominent members of the society and were held as the drivers of local economies.

"Because of the very low salaries, it is very unfortunate that teachers have become objects of ridicule, yet in the past they were considered paragons of virtue and role models. Their status is gone," said Dennis Sinyolo, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta).

Sinyolo said there was an urgent need to review the salaries of teachers in order to boost their morale.

"We want teachers to contribute to the development of the country by imparting their requisite skills and the right attitude to our learners. Teachers are professionals and you cannot have professionals in a country that are not paying taxes. This shows that something is terribly wrong," he said.

Under Zimbabwe's income tax bands, people earning below $750 000 do not pay tax, an arrangement that is designed to cushion them against the effects of hyperinflation. And teachers who are supposed to be middle-income earners have found themselves in that bracket.

The poverty datum line currently stands at $1 400 000. Figures supplied by Zimta show that some of the educational allowances for teachers can perfectly be described as "peanuts".

A teacher who is head of department receives an allowance of $500 a month and so is a teacher-in- charge with six infant classes.

An Advanced Level teacher receives $900, while a head of a boarding school, receives $22.50.

The situation is no better in colleges either where a Head of Division in charge of a team of lecturers gets $3 000, with the Head of Department earning $2 000.

"What can they do with that money, buy sweets?

We have made several pleas to have these allowances, which were last reviewed in July 2002, revised but we haven't succeeded. The situation is really unsustainable," said the Zimta secretary general, who said teachers could be better off if they were paid a basic salary of around $3 million.

As protracted negotiations on such a figure continue, for Meke and other teachers, each day is proving to be an uphill task.

"Things have become hard, very hard indeed. We don't know how, but we are just surviving," says Meke.
Standard
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