Source: Zanu PF dragging Zim to Stone Age – NewsDay Zimbabwe April 20, 2017
The recent statement by Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora that parents in rural areas can use goats to pay for school fees is quite laughable and other countries are looking at Zimbabwe scornfully.
NewsDay Comment
Dokora was quoted by State media over the weekend saying parents can offer livestock in lieu of payment of fees or provide labour at school.
While this, at face value, may be seen as empowering rural communities, where cash has always been scarce, the implementation could be nightmarish for schools and there are several unanswered questions.
For example, where would a school keep the goats or cattle after parents have paid the school fees? This would mean the school expending more resources to tend to the animals.
Schools would also be forced to deviate from their core business as they tend to the livestock and there are questions on accountability and transparency.
What can stop a head teacher from saying a goat has gone missing, yet that person would have diverted it to his kraal?
These are the questions authorities have to provide answers for before plunging headlong with this plan, which has been retrieved from the Stone Age.
Barter has long been seen as an inconvenient way to trade, as it depends on the double coincidence of wants, meaning you have to find someone who wants your goods or services and has the goods or services you also want.
Parents in rural areas have in the past sold their livestock to raise school fees, so why this new proposition?
Schools require money to operate and buy essentials like textbooks in the absence of government support due to dwindling inflows to Treasury.
If all parents were to offer their labour in lieu of fees, how are the same schools supposed to finance their day-to-day operations?
We hope this proposal has nothing to do with next year’s elections.
Zanu PF has failed to deliver on its promises made in 2013 and this new proposal seems like an attempt to curry favour with the rural electorate.
Zanu PF has a history of bending the rules whenever it suits them.
The economic crisis is the elephant in the room and the promise of 2,2 million jobs has remained a mirage.
Faced with a situation of having nothing to offer, the goats as fees seems to be its new selling point.
The current crop of leaders are capable of anything as long as it guarantees their access to the feeding trough.
COMMENTS
From BOND NOTES to BOND GOATS.
This is running the economy the Mugabe-zanu pf way. I guess this is the highest of success that Mugabe’s ZimAsset can. Can it ever be more successful than this? Zimbabwe has now proudly gone Goat-economy, soon we will be told by the one-centre-of-power. Courtesy of the one-centre-of-power’s corruption & its batch of thieves cum-voodoo economists. nxaaaaaa!
I thought we had already reached the Stone Age, and were regressing even further to the Animal Stage (the stage at which we are all animals prior to becoming Hominids.)
Goats for school fees can Bob pay with donkeys for his sons school fees in South Africa as he can’t afford Dubai education, then New syllabus for whose kids while theirs are getting better education outside the country?zanu destroyed the future of so many people only war vets will pay with pigs for their kids cz they fought for disaster Mugabe must rule to the grave prez for life Tongogara is crying for the beloved country
The script was written 37 years ago and latterly in the last 16 years. The west washed their hands from day one- UK/US – they gave all their support for independence and have abandoned ship – The look east policy will meet with the same result – The problem is visible governance and accountability and get on with your own affairs.
All the west knows is to pump aid into a corrupt regime and the irony of it – it comes out of my hard earned tax paying pocket – Why does one need aid when all has been stolen and squandered from a bread basket to a basket case and beyond – This has got to be written as the biggest collapse in nation history and a thesis written of how to ruin a nation – Livestock to pay for essentials – This is not comedy but sheer unbelief – I do not sleep sometimes……
What if a single mother happens to be a “Thigh vendor” as her occupation and offers free services to the school in lieu of fees, who receives the payment?? Or possibly as rumour has it goats are often used as substitutes for thigh vendors then one could temporarily “loan” the goat to the headmaster?? This is outrageously funny but unfortunately outrageously sad as well that we have reached this stage.