IT is sad to read about the poorly paid and frustrated teachers being allegedly abused by a Zanu PF outfit called Teachers4Ed, with indications the group is forcing the educators to support President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s re-election bid at all costs.
This is very unfair and disheartening. One’s choice of who to support must come from one’s heart and must not be through coercion and force.
Our sister paper The Standard yesterday reported that the Zanu PF affiliate group was implementing covert plans to “exhort” educators while at the same time forcing them to support Mnangagwa’s re-election.
This is despite the fact that teachers have been the most ignored since Mnangagwa’s rise to the presidency, with government largely ignoring their cries for fair remuneration and improved working conditions.
Government last year approved plans by the Teachers4ED to roll out its projects in all schools across the country, but indications are that the outfit’s meetings on such projects have been turned into a money-making scheme, where its leadership fleece schools and poorly paid teachers while threatening them for voting for the opposition.
According to reports, schools are being forced to part with US$50 attendance fees per teacher towards the gatherings organised by the group.
One such a meeting was recently held in Ruwa, with teachers left in fear of their lives after not-so-veiled threats were made at the gathering.
Officials from the Chitepo School of Ideology, and senior officials from the army, air force and police issued chilling threats of violence against teachers if they voted “wrongly”, and that voting for the opposition “would be inviting 2008”.
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Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections were marred by allegations of murder and widespread rape of political opponents by the late former President Robert Mugabe’s supporters.
Mugabe lost to bitter rival Morgan Tsvangirai in a first-round presidential vote, while his Zanu PF party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence in 1980 in the election.
Mugabe then secured re-election in a controversial run-off poll after Tsvangirai pulled out citing politically-motivated violence which his party said killed 200 of its supporters.
It is crass for public officials to make such threats against the harassed and poorly paid teachers and speaks to violent tendencies of the Zanu PF party.
It is clear that the party and its leaders fear the possibility of losing an election given the dire state of the economy, which exposes its failures as a governing party.
Harassing teachers and the poorly state of the economy is possibly behind the exodus of teachers to other countries. It means the deterioration of the education standards of this country and our children suffer the most.
The biggest threat to peaceful elections is proving to be the ruling Zanu PF party, its leaders and the so-called affiliate groups who are clearly enemies of democracy.
