Formal Education, Career Ambitions and Material Desire in Zimbabwe.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

This week it was very interesting to occasionally watch the public interviews of candidates aspiring to be judges of Zimbabwe’s High Court.  This is a constitutional requirement in relation to the selection of first time judges and the interviews are conducted by the Judicial Services Commission (JSC). With the names of successful candidates being forwarded to the President for final approval and appointment. 

Even though I am not a lawyer my occasional curiosity to observe the interviews was based on what I considered as the public display of a ‘constitutional process’.  As well as to also generally see the quality of aspiring candidates and their ability to tackle whatever the JSC was going to throw at them. 

Including wanting to see how at least on social media live platforms how some Zimbabweans were going to react to not only the process but also the quality of the candidates for the third most important judicial office in the country (after the Constitutional  and Supreme courts). 

What struck me was both how educated and experienced some of the publicly interviewed candidates were.  Some with decades of experience, others with multiple masters degrees either in law or ancillary courses.

While I cannot be an arbiter of how well any of them performed, I then realized an important element that we generally overlook.  Both in our personal and professional lives.  Which was balancing our formal education with our career options as they are linked to what would potentially be our materialist ambitions. 

And upon reflection I realized that the general and publicly, even popularly, appreciated assumption that education is the key to success that we were taught from a young age still remains key.  Not just for young Zimbabweans but even older generations.   Except with the question that keeps emerging during and post the Mugabe government era on what sort of education is this that would be key? Both Mugabe and Mnangagwa appeared more keen on what they have referred to as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as the future and priority of government education policy. This is in keeping with global trends that are largely focused on technological innovation and commodity production.  With a deliberate abandonment of social sciences and the arts as either being too abstract or at best having to link themselves to again, STEM. As is expected within the global neo-liberal economy where production and the worship of 'free' markets defeat all else. 

So as young Zimbabweans are nudged toward those fields and upon reflection on the JSC interviews I asked myself a question on what could it be that is the end game motivation of formal education? Not only in relation to STEM but also across the social sciences, law included?  In this I realized that material well being appears to be the cornerstone of it.  While there can be a dabbling in various nationalisms and development theories, to be educated is considered to be generally materially successful. 

Hence in our Zimbabwean context dating back from the late 1990s to present whether one had a diploma in one course or the other, the continuing desire to acquire either undergraduate degrees or PhD’s is directly linked to moving forward with the material side of life.  And being recognized for it. 

What this has created is an educational system that quite literally frowns down upon others who either did not get to specific levels or who even after trying so hard to do so are considered still unable to meet the material success criteria or their vaunted formal education.

But there is also obviously the reality that formal education does not always get you material success in Zimbabwe.  There are many that regrettably consider it as non-consequential in our national context because of what they call the ‘hustle’ or ‘entrepreneurship’.  Which is a direct derivative of neo-liberal political economies in which depending on your political or economic elite links can get you to some sort of material success.  To the extent of deriding for example two of our country's most important professions/careers such as in nursing or teaching that are now sadly frowned upon.

What is however more important is addressing the question of how Zimbabweans now view careers as based on formal education.   And this can be done in at least four respects.

The first being that every job and career matters.  No matter how you got there.  What is more important is that there be equitable distribution of social welfare for all of us. You can be working in security, banking, education, law,  health or journalism but should not be fundamentally motivated to want to get another formal qualification on the basis of material desire.  If we make our society a more equitable society we would not have these ubiquitous and in some cases unrealistic ambitions for everyone to want to live in Borrowdale Brooke, Harare by hook or by crook. Or send their children to expensive private schools as though they will never live in real Zimbabwean society.  That is to say, if we realise that everyone has social and economic rights, career ambitions will not get in the way of our collective well being.  We will compete less for jobs such as for example sitting on the high court bench and be focused more on our own professional capacities beyond the material.

This then brings me to the second point as it relates to a need for us to embrace a new careerism.  We cannot continue to function on an assumption of escapism from our initial careers. Even though we are allowed to depart from them, the initial angles we should take for example to teaching is that we believe in it.  Where we look at it from a materialist lenses we shortchange not only the profession but also the nation.  The key issue is to strengthen the representative ability of either unions or the governments understanding of the importance of these professions as key to a better future for the country and its subsequent generations.

In the third instance, we need to learn to curb our material ambitions with our professional realities.  And this is a particularly difficult point to make.   The neo-liberal economic system that we live under encourages us to be consumerist in our approaches to life.  And it also further encourages us to assume inequality as a key to recognition for again materialistic success.  Questions such as do you have a car, where do you live, do you own a house, a property, are pretty much common and they regrettably motivate us to ignore the actual reality that while we all need housing, transport, health services and education for our kids, an individualistic approach never cuts it. 

Fourthly and finally, where we consider assumptions about the future of formal education we should consider at least one key thing.  This being that we need to impart to young Zimbabweans that everyone gets a fair start to life but also that no matter where they end up on the education rung ladder, they will live in an equitable society.  No matter where they work, their professional qualifications or their geographical location. And in this, a certainty that careers in whatever field they choose deliberately or by default are never about material envy but fair, equitable and transparent appreciation of their efforts.  As complex as this may appear. *Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)