The proposal to allow government to grab privately-owned educational institutions, including crèches and schools, has been described as ploy by the greedy elite to continue looting.
In interviews with NewsDay yesterday, politicians, student leaders and other activists castigated the move saying it would destroy the education system which is already in the doldrums.
According to Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere, educational institutions with an asset value of $1 a year should comply with the Empowerment Act.
Zimbabwe National Students’ Union (Zinasu) spokesperson Zechariah Mushawatu said the move was suspicious and was a guise to “quench insatiable appetites for politicians wanting to accumulate more wealth”.
“It is clear this is a way for the looting elite in the current government to get a way to have ownership stakes in private learning institutions which are considered by many to be lucrative businesswise,” he said.
“As Zinasu, we are not fooled by those who use indigenisation as a guise to quench their insatiable appetite for accumulation of more wealth and this instrument can have an effect on institutional autonomy because private institutions of learning are supposed to choose their management methods.”
He however said on the positive side indigenous ownership may stop discrepancies in salaries received between white and black teachers as was reportedly taking place in private schools countrywide.
Economist and Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn secretary for international relations Brian Mubariki said it was unfortunate that Kasukuwere “continued to plunge the economy into freefall with his populist policies”.
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“Such disinvestment policies are being necessitated by the urgent need for political survival by Zanu PF which is seemingly facing increased pressure from the unhappy nation. We all support indigenisation, but such policies that are literally thrown at us without broad interrogation and consensus are a sure sign of another economic self-made tragedy in the offing,” Mubariki said.
MDC-T legislator for Mbizo, Settlement Chikwinya, said it was unfortunate because private schools had generally produced better results than government institutions since they remunerated their staff better.
“To place these schools under the indigenisation plan is obviously aimed at robbing the schools of their profits. The resultant effect is that the education sector will go down the same way the land reform programme did, just like the current poor performance of our industrial sector. Surprisingly, the same minister and his Zanu PF colleagues send their children to schools outside the country simply because they have condemned the local education system and now they want to plunge it into further chaos,” Chikwinya said.
Chikwinya said Parliament should strongly object to those regulations using powers vested in them. National co-ordinator for the March 11 Movement, Gilbert Kagodora, described the move as a way of trying to expropriate properties from those perceived to be enemies of Zanu PF.
“We have failed to grow the cake in the past 30 years and it has become so small that those who are entrusted with making the right policies that could have seen us not scrambling for the crumbs are now finding it difficult to retain their status as government officials, hence the need for a forced takeover of privately owned businesses,” said Kagodora.
