By Tererai Karimakwenda
04 July 2005-07-04

The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) reports that the police cancelled a 10 kilometre race they had organised to raise awareness about the AIDs pandemic. The event had been approved for July 2nd by several divisions of government, including the police, central intelligence and other divisions that needed to be notified.

PTUZ president Raymond Majongwe said the police gave all sorts of reasons why they had cancelled such an important event but in the end he believes it was political. Majongwe said there is a misconception that all teachers in the union are opposition supporters.As for the importance of the event, Majongwe said teachers are perishing. 7000 of them have died of AIDs in the last 4 years. He said every school in the country has lost at least one teacher and at any given time there is a teacher on sick leave at every school.