Being Educated but Unconscious to a Fault in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

My father probably hoped I would be a mathematical genius like him. My mother might have hoped the same but with an anticipation that I would encounter a religious calling to become a Catholic priest. Regrettably I did not meet either of my parents’ expectations. I never became a mathematical genius nor a Catholic priest.  But I did know at some point that in everything I was to eventually become, formal education was given as key.  As taught not only by my parents but also by the Zimbabwean government. 

And education also had a success hierarchy.  The most educated among us would eventually become medical doctors, engineers, lawyers (thanks to Herbert Chitepo) or priests.  The least educated would become bus drivers, security guards or God forbid what we derisively refer to as ‘garden boys’.  

And Robert Mugabe insisted on this hierarchy for a while. He also set up various state universities that demystified the acquisition of degrees and made it almost normal to have one.   

Until at some point the most educated became restive.  Those that were educated to blue collar levels decided that his stay in power was too iniquitous to their own aspirations and formed trade unions that challenged the very same hierarchy. 

In challenging it however the aspirations were the same.  That their children would via further education escape their own blue collar or peasant lives to being the nouveau rich in the leafier suburbs of Harare. 

And this is very ironic.  In being educated and struggling to get our children similarly or better educated we aspire for the same things, same lifestyles that those who would historically deny us already have. 

This is the bane of what I have previously referred to as the ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Program) generation of the 1990s.  We were taught that success, which was defined as driving a car, owning a television and living in affluent parts of capital cities comes through success in formal education.  Only for that education to be made redundant with economic liberalization where jobs became not only based on your actual education but also your willingness to take risks and forgo a diligent studious past. 

But we insist in believing that the type of education your child receives will make them cross the Rubicon  of success.  Or will ensure that they remain north of Samora Machel Avenue.  The truth of the matter is that we are leading our children down a false garden path.  If like me, you were privileged enough to go to a school like St Ignatious College, Chishawasha, there is no logical reason why you would not want your offspring, to go to the same.  Regrettably a lot of us who went to the same school believe that it would be beneath their aspirations for their children to go to the same schools they went to. 

Education then shifts from being a route to success to being an emblem of lifestyle success.  Almost as though we are watching how others perceive of our own personal success.  Never mind the children. 

But I must get back to my main point in this blog. 

As Zimbabweans we assume we are bright sparks because of our education system and our own personal education.  The truth of the matter is that while we may be formally smart we are organically dull. Our formal education regrettably does not always see the future.  It is too selfish, too self centered and too focused on immediate recognition.

This is what would explain our inability to think, even as educated as we would be told we are, collectively. Tell me, what intelligent, educated people even consider privatizing as natural a right as water?  Our mothers would have to defrock themselves in Bikita if that were to ever happen.  But it is being planned and for execution by the most educated of us.  PhD’s and all. 

The key issue is that we are at fault for assuming flaunting education certificates as the sine qua non of individual success. 

We have forgotten that you should never become educated in order to be a copycat.  Or to mimic others.  We should be educated to produce new knowledge.  Always.  Especially in our African contexts where the Global North thinks we are exceedingly dull. Or that we are not organic about our won knowledge production.  

If you were to walk in Harare and ask young comrades the exact role of Mbuya Nehanda in our African liberation struggles you are least likely to find any affirmation of her role.  Even as you read this blog, if you are Zimbabwean, you will probably google her name. 

We cannot assume that the more educated we are, the more organically conscious we are.  I know comrades who have gone to Bible school and become pastors but still exhibit a naivety that cannot be considered progressive.  Or comrades who think being called a comrade is Russian and therefore anti-American.  Educated as they are.  Yet we know, historically, we would never have triumphed in the liberation struggle without calling referring to each other as comrade. Or friend.

You see comrades, we are not as educated as we think. In Africa.  We suffer. We continue. But we know how to talk and act back.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com