AHEAD of South Africa’s general elections whose date is expected to be announced before month-end, one of that country’s opposition parties, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) has reportedly evoked the dreaded xenophobia spectre by advocating for the expulsion of Zimbabwean learners from South African schools.
The PA leader, Kenny Kunene, recently stormed Esikhisini School in Pretoria to demonstrate against the enrolment of Zimbabweans at the school in a move which will obviously chill the spines of thousands of Zimbabwean students not only in South African schools, but at colleges and universities across that country.
This is a very sad development we hope the South African government will closely monitor because Kunene and his party’s mindset is archaic and regresses African co-operation and development.
It is quite unfortunate that despite xenophobia belonging to medieval times it appears to have been occasionally allowed to continue festering in South Africa.
However, the latest emergence of the scourge in the education sector should be a real wake-up call for Zimbabwe whose education was once a pride of the region and Africa as a whole.
Our government should seriously be brainstorming over why so many of the country’s learners are flocking to South Africa and elsewhere.
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Given our once strong reputation as leaders in the educational field, by now Zimbabwe should have been Africa’s educational Mecca, but we have allowed the opportunity to slip away.
Last year, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency announced that the number of educational visitors to the country had decreased by 172,2% in the second quarter of 2023 to 2 345 from 6 382 in the comparable 2022 quarter.
These figures clearly indicate the dire state of our education sector which is now unable to attract educational visitors.
As much as some of us continue to believe that our education is top notch, the migration of learners to South Africa and other nations as well as the decreasing number of foreign nationals visiting the country for educational purposes clearly indicate that we should stop fooling ourselves.
Our educational standards have plummeted to the point of being a pale shadow of what it was in the 1980s following our attainment of independence and the situation is now threatening our learners who are seeking better prospects in South Africa. This should jolt our government into action to shore up our education sector.
It is, in fact, an embarrassment that Zimbabwe has for the past 44 years failed to develop its education sector into a vibrant educational tourism hub which should be raking in invaluable foreign currency.
Instead we are losing precious money as learners opt to study outside our borders simply because of falling standards in the education sector.
There is no excuse for our deteriorated educational standards because all we needed to do was to build on an already existing strong foundation.
It is not yet too late to salvage the situation. All it requires is the will, especially on the part of government to enact policies which promote high education standards by, among other things, cleaning up the mess at the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council whose handling of our primary and secondary school examinations leaves a lot to be desired. A reputable Zimsec will be the first step in improving the country’s education standards and reputation.