Human Rights groups raided while Zim children are still not at school

You would think that with cholera and hunger and a fast collapsing economy Zanu PF would be finding its resources stretched very thin, struggling to contend with crisis after crisis. How do they cope…? Easy. By simply ignoring the details that inflict misery and hardship on the people, and concentrating them in the areas that heap more misery and hardship on the people.

The Counselling Services Unit in Harare was raided on Thursday – not for the first time. The CSU has for years dealt with trauma victims, medical and psychological conditions and their very good work on behalf of the people of our country has made them a target. I was told that the day before they were visted, ZimRights had been raided, and apparently ZLHR (Zim Lawyers for Human Rights) were next on the list.

In the meanwhile, misery grows in our society.

Children should now be at school, but our schools have yet to open. Against a background of virtually no schooling last year because of continuous absences from teachers and the disruptive elections in March, our nation’s 12 year olds sat to write their Grade 7 exams (these are the  exams that mark the end of their primary education and the start of their secondary schooling).

But where are their results? Efforts to obtain Grade 7 results are met with “we don’t know” from the various school authorities. Apparently the 2008 Grade 7 exams have not even been marked yet.  I was told that in the absence of results, secondary schools will instead use a school report from the middle of the last term of last year to use to evaluate Form 1 applicants.

But the struggles for our young children don’t end there. The school uniform for one high school in Harare will cost just under US$400. How can a parent be asked to spend that amount of money when they can’t even be sure if their child will be asked to leave the school when the Grade 7 exams are finally marked and revealed (if they ever are)?

And if the school fees go into US currency?  How many children will be on the streets, their parents unable to afford the US based fees?  We must remember that hundreds of thousands of children in the rural areas missed most of last years schooling due to the fact their schools were taken over for March 29th elections and then never re-opened as they had become the Zanu PF youth militia and army torture camps for the remainder of the year.

These children are our future economy. You would think Zanu PF efforts would be being put towards addressing these sort of issues, and not disrupting the work of human rights activists. But they are the party of violence anbd suppression and no solutions, and that’s why the people want them out of power and on their bike peddling off into the horizon as soon as possible.

This entry was posted by Harare activists on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 12:09 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.