Address by the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, the Right Hon. Morgan Tsvangirai, at the Graduation Ceremony for the students in the United States Achievers Programme (USAP)
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Your Excellency, Ambassador Charles Ray
Public Affairs officer Sharon Hudson Dean
Educational Advisor and USAP co-ordinator Rebecca Ziegler Mano
Senior Government officials here present,
Parents, Guardians,
Students,
Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to have been invited to this very important graduation ceremony.
I would like to commend the government of the United States of America, through their local Embassy, for putting education and knowledge as a top priority.
As education is universally recognized as one of the most fundamental building blocks for human development and poverty reduction, I decided to forego some of the many engagements that had been arranged for me so that I could honour this great gathering.
Education, in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual.
In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to another.
For nations it creates a dynamic workforce and well-informed citizens able to compete and cooperate globally – opening doors to economic and social prosperity.
It is key to attaining the Millennium Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals set a more realistic, but still difficult, deadline of 2015 when all children everywhere should be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
Towards achieving this milestone, my Government through the Ministry of Education worked with cooperating partners and raised 13 million textbooks for our 5 500 primary schools countrywide.
But education alone cannot make up for the rigidities of life, because you who are graduating today would not have made it without the support, assistance and guidance from family friends, lecturers and most importantly the people of the United States of America, through their local Embassy here in Harare.
Thus, this gathering today is to honour 31 Zimbabwean students who have earned scholarships worth a total of US$6.9 million to pursue further studies at highly selective colleges and universities in the United States through the U.S. Student Achievers Program (USAP).
I am informed that the 31 students whom we are sending off today completed a year-long programme run by the U.S. Embassy to assist them in the university application and scholarship process. USAP is designed to assist academically talented but economically disadvantaged students.
This is why, Your Excellency, I would like to commend your Government for extending help to our disadvantaged yet intelligent children.
This gesture that you have extended is a seed that will germinate and multiply into many more schooled Zimbabweans.
To you, the graduands, I say that you must all realize that this is a great opportunity you have been offered.
It is an opportunity that you must exploit for the benefit, not only of yourself, but of your parents, relatives and most importantly, your country.
In all cultures around the world, people are confirming one simple and enduring truth: whether in family, business, finance and politics, from giant multinationals to working bees, more is achieved more efficiently, and to greater effect, when we work together.
When partnerships work, they build sustainable, well-managed and efficient human services. In short, they can transform a system. It is one such great partnership that has helped you to this day and that has opened this great door in front of you.
You are Zimbabwe’s torchbearers wherever you are going. The whole nation counts on you. However, you must be aware that this puts a huge responsibility over your shoulders, the responsibility to learn new technologies and to learn new cultures, which you will have to impart unto others upon your return.
I am heartened to learn that USAP students, who went before you, who have completed their studies and training have begun returning to Africa and some specifically to Zimbabwe. I hope you will all do the same at the end of your learning process. Zimbabwe needs the new knowledge that you will bring back home.
It is our belief that when you bring back this knowledge, it will help cure the brain drain that has so militated against development in Zimbabwe.
We hope that some of you will employ your newly acquired skills to develop local schools, colleges and universities. While we thank our co-operating partners for helping you to leave the country for further studies, this should not mean the abdication of duty by the Government.
The Government must continue to improve the standards of learning institutions in the country, improve the standards of earnings of teachers and lecturers and this will help create a conducive learning environment for our children.
While I am heartened by this gesture by the American people, my vision is to create world class learning institutions so that our children do not have to go outside the country to study, but can only do so as a choice not because we do not have globally competing facilities.
We want Zimbabwe to reclaim its status as a referral centre for education in the sub-Saharan Africa and this vision will be supported by a strong education oriented budget underpinned by a growing economy in a democratic environment. This is possible.
As politicians we will ensure that we address the political problem so that the environment becomes conducive for education, for business and for investment.
This leadership gap had taken Zimbabwe back to the primitive ages were brother rose up against brother and where education was a preserve for a few rich elite. This is not the Zimbabwe that we envisage. Over the last two years we have arrested this decline in educational standards.
I am sure that when you finish your studies in the US, we will have found a lasting solution to the political crisis we are currently going through.
We have already started this work by working on a new, democratic constitution. We have also started work on a roadmap towards free, fair, democratic and violence-free elections so that we resolve the crisis of leadership and legitimacy that we face.
You must know that as your Prime Minister, I attended a humble primary school in rural Buhera and I did not have the great opportunity afforded to you today.
So go and be good students, respect your hosts and work hard. Exhibit the true Zimbabwean spirit, that of hospitality and hard-work. Be vigilant and wise.
I say to you be wise as serpents but harmless as doves.
I thank you.
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Bail ruling for 24 MDC activists postponed again
Thursday, 30 June 2011
The High Court ruling for bail by the 24 MDC activists who are facing trumped-up charges of murdering a police officer in Glen View, Harare has been postponed for fifth time today. Ruling has been set for tomorrow.
Lawyers representing the activists said the judge informed them that he was postponing the hearing to Friday because he was not yet through with his ruling.
The MDC condemns the continued postponement of the bail application hearing and it is nothing but a delaying tactic by the state.
So far the bail application ruling has been moved five times, with the state requesting the postponements for various reasons.
Among those in remand are, Last Maengahama, a member of the MDC National Executive Council, two Harare City councillors, Tungamirai Madzokere of Ward 32, Glen View and Oddrey Sydney Chirombe of Ward 33, Budiriro.
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MDC Information & Publicity Department
Harvest House
44 Nelson Mandela Ave
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Will Africa ever be able to solve its own problems?
Will Africa ever be able to solve its own problems?
Tanonoka Joseph Whande
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been in power now for more than thirty years.
He started out well because he used to listen as he surrounded himself with very keen and knowledgeable people for advice, just like any head of state would do.
He urged us, black and white, to put the fierce and gustily memories of the war of liberation behind us, forgive each other and work purposefully for a new Zimbabwe, a new nation that was colour blind.
It wasn’t just words.
His first cabinet was composed of some ministers who had served in Ian Smith’s government.
Even today, I and millions of others cannot believe that Mugabe did not mean what he said about Reconciliation because it worked well for the nation while it lasted.
We cheered and embraced because we were being ourselves; we finally had a chance to show the world that we were not vindictive and had not fought a racial war but a war of liberation.
We were together, celebrating the changing of a system we held to be unjust.
The world looked at us with envy and pride. Our then Prime Minister Mugabe was even suggested for the Nobel Peace Prize.
This behaviour convinced all and sundry that Mugabe was, indeed, a great leader.
Black people in America, Britain and Europe, along with many here in Africa, still find it difficult to criticise Robert Mugabe today.
It’s called nostalgia.
As our young nation grew, so did complacency, especially on Mugabe’s part.
The reins of power have always changed the direction of the men in power.
Instead of strengthening the nation, they start to strengthen their power base.
Instead of the much touted democracy, there came a drive for a one party state.
Instead of ‘one person, one vote’, elections have been turned into death traps.
Friends were immediately turned into enemies and so were those advisers who told the leader the truth.
Praise singing became a lucrative undertaking and citizens who disagreed with the leader’s policies were weeded out.
The army and the police, meant to protect the nation and the people, changed roles and became the protectors of an individual.
One time comrades have now become enemies and the conflict continues to this day.
It hurts to note that in Zimbabwe, the transformation to such a deplorable state did not take even three years after independence, when massacres of people started.
To this day, 2011, we continue to lose our citizens through the hands of Mugabe; to this day, Zimbabweans are still fighting to free themselves from Robert Mugabe.
What irks some of us is the fact that the issue of Zimbabwe was never a secret.
The world and Zimbabwe’s neighbours watched the situation deteriorating but did nothing more than accept refugees as they started to stream into their countries.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been in power now for more than thirty years and he can hardly walk, no longer in control of the country, let alone himself, and is dogged by several ailments consummate with his age.
At 87 and ailing, Mugabe no longer has a grasp of events because of his advanced age; dementia, they call it.
During the last SADC Summit in Sandton, South Africa, Mugabe was reported to have referred to South African President Jacob Zuma as Mandela “a sign that health experts say shows that dementia may be taking its toll on Mugabe”.
This comes after Mugabe had to move around a Livingstone hotel venue of the SADC Troika Summit in a golf cart a few months ago.
It is an open secret that Mugabe’s illness “is causing a lot of divisions within ZANU-PF with several party heavyweights jostling to take over from him”.
Yet some countries, notably South Africa, are so insensitive to the Zimbabwean quagmire as to continue trying to prop up a man that nature has now repeatedly singled out as deserving retirement as far back as more than twenty years ago.
What does the so-called international community want Mugabe to do?
To save lives, this community of nations should not seek to accommodate Mugabe; they should encourage him to retire to save lives, to save a nation.
Have they not done the same with other dictators?
Is it because Zimbabwe does not have oil like Iraq and Libya that the international community can stomach the murder and abuse of innocent civilians?
Mr Jacob Zuma, South Africa's first citizen, what are you doing?
The people of Libya, who never elected Gaddaffi, say they do not want the man but Zuma wants Gaddaffi to stay.
In Zimbabwe, Zuma is busy trying to engage a man who lost elections and who never listened to any other leader in this world except those that found no fault in his destruction of a once vibrant nation.
Zuma’s so-called road map has given Mugabe nothing but an extension of time to continue with the abuse of people.
Zuma says he is trying to stop the further suffering of people yet Mugabe and his rogues continue to abuse people.
Zuma says he wants to mediate to bring peace and stability to Zimbabwe yet he watches as the culprits continue to violate those same issues he is trying to stop.
How do you engage mad men who continue arresting those same people they are supposed to be making peace with?
Since the SADC Summit is Sandton, South Africa, three weeks ago, several cabinet ministers belonging to the MDC have been arrested on frivolous charges.
Just this past Tuesday, Mugabe’s youths forced Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, to flee his Harare offices after they stormed the Ministry of Finance offices demanding Biti’s resignation.
Clearly, the raid on Biti’s offices, coming days after the arrest of another of Tsvangirai’s ministers and statements by an army general should be a clear signal that the situation is getting worse.
Timba was arrested allegedly at the instigation of Jonathan Moyo who said that Timba had said that Mugabe had lied about the outcome of the SADC Sandton Summit.
Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Zimbabwe is among countries with the highest number of journalists forced into exile due to imprisonment and other threats.
The report said that “Zimbabwe’s peers in this category are Ethiopia, Iran, and war-ravaged countries of Somalia and Iraq”.
ZANU-PF instigated violence has been on the increase for more than a year now, with youth militias still terrorizing people.
The ZANU-PF youth militias even had the audacity early this week to gate crash a Harare residents meeting of 1,500 people, and beat up both government officials and residents present.
Yet on Tuesday, the SADC organ that looks into political and security problems in the region removed Zimbabwe from its agenda, saying the situation in the country has ‘normalised’.
It is surprising how SADC could reach at such a decision at a time when several MDC activists are being held in prison and their bail applications repeatedly delayed.
The heart of the matter is that the army generals in Zimbabwe are abusing a sick old man by using him as a shield. Wrong solutions are being sought on the Zimbabwe issue because it is clear that Mugabe no longer has any role to play and is not calling any shots anymore.
Mugabe, in his current state, is of no use on the political scene. Opposing factions in ZANU-PF, including the generals, are delaying Mugabe’s departure so that they consolidate the positions they have covered in the succession battle.
What do you think?
Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com.
Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that there will never be any solution that includes Mugabe because now, it is no longer Mugabe making the decisions.
People like Zuma must make it clear to the generals in Zimbabwe that they must stay out of politics and let the people solve this issue.
As for SADC, what did you expect? At a time when things are ominously getting worse for our citizens, how can SADC honestly stand up and say things in Zimbabwe have “normalized”?
It appears to me that the so-called international community is not serious about solving the Zimbabwean crisis.
Look what the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) did in the Ivory Coast and compare that with what SADC is doing.
Zuma is busy trying to save Gaddaffi while citizens of Zimbabwe are being killed and abused next door.
Africans are enslaving themselves all the time; they can’t find solutions to the problems they create. So much for African solutions to African problems.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday, June 30th, 2011.
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