In a press statement released in response to the government’s State of the Nation Address presented by the President, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa yesterday, The Amalgamated Rural Teacher’s Union of Zimbabwe, ARTUZ, has rubbished the address as an escapists intent to sweep salient issues under the carpet.
Read full statement below :
Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, ARTUZ is gravely outraged and seriously concerned by President Mnangagwa’s deliberate stance to avoid tackling real problems affecting workers and the peasants and pompously glossing over issue of national importance during the State of Nation Address.
Whenever the President tried to speak to detail, he completely lied to the nation or focused on detail of peripheral importance. It is important to remind the President that the nation wanted to hear solutions to pertinent issues not propaganda meant to distract people from demanding accountability.
The worst of all is that yesterday’s SONA like all previous versions doesn’t talk to the realities obtaining on the ground but glosses over the nonsense happening in our Zimbabwe. All this clearly revealing that the agenda for the Second Republic has nothing to do with the worker but all to do with ‘Vene’.
When the teachers and workers expected good news on their welfare there was nothing only for the President to scare teachers considering his view of the Teacher Professional Council, (TPC). He views the council as an institution to regulate conditions of service and creating a code of conduct.
ARTUZ wishes to remind the Second Republic that the conditions of service are only fixed through the collective bargaining between Worker Representatives and the Employer in line with section 203 b (1) read together with section 65 (5) of the Constitution. The TPC’s main focus will be on professional development and professional conduct. Teachers want a TPC for teachers not a government tool to perpetuate misery and poverty to teachers. ARTUZ broadly declares that such a TPC will be totally rejected by teachers.
It must also be mentioned that the address lacked strategy on education financing to reduce massive number of dropouts we are witnessing daily through commodification of education.
SONA came barely a week after the MPC had devalued the ZiG by 44% effectively eroding the poor salaries of all the workers only for Mnangagwa to claim that the devaluation is meant to stabilise prices. What nonsense is this when workers’ salaries are stolen by the government, which is mandated to secure the livelihood of its workers and State resources. The slashing of the ZiG salary component of workers through the devaluation of the surrogate currency is a clear and direct indicator that the Mnangagwa administration is at war with workers, teachers in particular.
ARTUZ is ready to fight back through constitutional means. ARTUZ demands 100% USD salary. Teachers are key in the stability of Zimbabwe and as such deserve a stable currency as their salary. Government must be reminded that a living wage premised at $1 260 is the least a newly recruited teacher may be paid.
Since the SONA has failed to give hope and direction to workers and the nation as a whole ARTUZ is inviting all teachers and workers to not wait for the repeat of 2008 but to:
- Mobilise and organize each other at their workplaces to demand for a living wage paid in USD-$1 260;
- Sit in at the workplace, don’t offer any services
- Mobilise for the total withdrawal their labour on day to be announced until the government succumb to workers demands. $1 260 paid in all workers accounts;
- Shun and reject neo liberal policies meant to impoverish the masses.
ARTUZ is well aware that the teachers and workers are vulnerable and in fear and that the government thrives on the said fear. Fear is the Second Republic’s determinant to power. However, it must be known that it is the Second Republic that is in fear. Their fear is evident in the arbitrary arrests and abductions effected witness on a daily basis. Zimbabwe is witnessing a rise in arrests of innocent individuals than during the colonial era. The jambanja style the regime employs is the reason the SONA has never addressed pertinent issues. The silence on the SONA by the masses has continued to mislead the government into believing workers are idiots who can not stand for their rights. Enough is enough.
The government has potential to pay us $1 260. The government is capable of assuming teachers debt and that of all civil servants. The government is capable of funding basic education to stop massive school dropouts. It is only teachers and workers who can compel the government to fulfill its obligations.