JOHANNESBURG, 10 February 2009 (IRIN) - About 94 percent of Zimbabwe's rural schools - where most children are educated - failed to open this year, the UN Children's Fund said on 10 February 2009. The education system, once viewed as the finest in sub-Saharan Africa,
has become a casualty of the country’s economic collapse and political
infighting.
Tsitsi Singizi, UNICEF’s spokesman in Zimbabwe, told IRIN the priority
of the new unity government should be to salvage the education system.
"The infrastructure for education is still there, but it needs to be
brought back from the brink," she urged.
The leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
Morgan Tsvangirai, is expected to be inaugurated as prime minister on
11 February and the a unity government, agreed by ZANU-PF and the MDC
on 15 September 2008, is expected to begin its work of reconstructing
Zimbabwe.
"Children in rural areas already live on the margins, many are
orphaned, a huge number depend on food aid, they struggle on numerous
fronts," UNICEF’s Representative in Zimbabwe, Roeland Monasch, said in
a statement. "Now these children are being denied the only basic right
that can better their prospects. It is unacceptable."
Widespread disruption of schools began in the aftermath of the March
2008 elections and continued beyond a presidential run-off poll in
June, which was not recognized internationally because of the
state-sponsored political violence.
After the elections, many teachers failed to return to their posts as a
consequence of salaries made worthless by hyperinflation and a fear of
continued political violence.
In 2008, school attendance rates dropped from 80 percent to 20 percent,
UNICEF said, and the few schools that opened in 2009 are charging fees
in foreign currency, making them unaffordable to most citizens.