Having destroyed all that was good about Zimbabwe – a good manufacturing sector, a sound public health system that was a shining example on the continent, a world class farming sector that they ruined through some absurd and racist agrarian reform programme – now President Robert Mugabe and his cohorts are determined to turn our children into a generation of uneducated imbeciles.
No serious learning took place at public schools in 2008 because teachers spent the better part of the year striking for more pay or sitting at home because they could not afford the bus fare to work on their meagre salaries.
The new school year will go to waste again because teachers will not report for duty unless the government agrees to pay them in hard cash. We do not blame them. Who, if they had a choice, would accept the Zimbabwe dollar?
That teachers, doctors, nurses or anybody else will not accept the near worthless dollar speaks of a worse crisis that has seen thousands of jobs lost, while poverty has risen to frightening levels in the entire nation – except the ruling class of course.
The crisis that continues to get worse by the day could have been eased months ago and on the way to a permanent resolution. If only Mugabe had put the interests of Zimbabwe first by agreeing to share power equitably with the MDC, instead of trying to cheat the opposition into joining government as a powerless junior partner.
Likewise, the 3 000 people that have died needlessly because of cholera could have been saved had Mugabe and Zanu (PF) cared.
But this is too much to ask of the selfish buccaneers in charge of the ship of state. They abandoned the noble ideals of the liberation struggle many years ago.
They are too busy stealing taxpayers' money or fighting over which last commercial farm to loot to be able to see the anguish of parents agonising over whether to send their children to school where they may contract cholera or keep them at home and damage their future.
Sheer greed and an obscene desire to keep power at all costs is what has motivated Zanu (PF). It is the only motive driving them into this unity government with Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC.
We have said it before and in the name of our children who are being denied an education by this incompetent lot, we say it again: this unity government cannot work, not when there is no paradigm shift on the part of Zanu (PF), not when Mugabe continues to see it as a means to outflank the opposition.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga