Many schools in Zimbabwe have been on hold for a week after the government suspended 135,000 teachers who failed to show up for the start of the school year for salary reasons.
The teachers earn the equivalent of 90 euros per month, not even enough to pay, for some of them, the journeys between their home and school.
The salary dispute between teachers and the government has been going on since Harare decided three years ago to no longer pay salaries in US dollars but in the local currency, which has been heavily devalued by galloping inflation. This movement would affect, according to the unions, 90% of teachers working in public schools in the country. The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Tumisang Thabela, has threatened striking teachers with a three-month salary suspension.
“The lowest paid teacher earns around US$80. We want salaries equivalent to those of Mugabe’s time, which is US$540”, claimed Takavafira Zhou, president of the progressive teachers’ union. Zimbabwean authorities have reportedly offered a 20% pay rise and a $100 Covid-19 allowance.
“Teachers won’t go back to work. Pay us what we asked for and we’ll be serving the country. Without that, it’s going to be difficult“, said the general secretary of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), Raymond Majongwe, taken up by the press site New Zimbabwe.
Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who ruled with an iron fist for decades, was particularly supportive of the education sector for which he had strong ambitions. Unfortunately, the former president had at the same time largely contributed to the collapse of the country’s economy, in particular by imposing too brutal agrarian reform, which ruined agriculture in Zimbabwe, once considered the breadbasket of the country. Southern Africa.
In September 2020, teachers had already launched a similar movement. Strikes by teachers, nurses and doctors to demand better salaries are frequent in this crisis-ridden southern African country, characterized by hyperinflation and the collapse of the local currency.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been in recession for more than ten years. President Emmerson Mnangangwa, who succeeded Robert Mugabe following a coup in 2017, has so far failed to deliver on his promise to revive the economy.