The Sunday News
It is not enshrined in any policy document nor is it recorded in any other form, but there is consensus in South African institutions of higher learning that Zimbabwean teachers and lecturers embody excellence. South African privately owned colleges and high schools go out of their way to offer all sorts of incentives and enticements to attract Zimbabwean teachers and lecturers.
Students in high schools, colleges and universities here have also learnt to invest so much faith in the Zimbabwean educators as teachers and lecturers are affectionately referred to in this part of Africa. Largely this hype about the Zimbabwean educator has been one good article of pure myth. Yet, there are certain qualities that Zimbabwean education, especially primary and secondary education as we experienced it in the 80s and 90s, cultivated in the student and which are not easily found in scholars from other countries. For that reason, Zimbabwean teachers and lecturers in South Africa tend to be the envy of their peers and sometimes objects of hatred by underperforming and wanting colleagues.
The Question of Language
The majority of the products of Zimbabwean education tend to have an impressive facility with language and expression in English. The first week or two in the life of a Zimbabwean educator in a South African classroom or lecture room are made out of trying moments of being laughed at by students who believe you should say “safty” instead of “safety” as we say. Accent issues tend to turn even the most serious Zimbabwean teacher into a comedian and the relish of lazy and bored learners. Soon enough, however, the entertained students adapt to feeding from the usual linguistic embroidery of the Zimbabwean who dribbles and juggles with English phrases, a facility which South Africans with their Afrikaans and English confusion or complication, rarely have. Importantly, the facility with language helps educators to explain subject matter clearly and effectively even to the slowest learner, an attribute that has turned the Zimbabwean educators into idols.
Attitude and Fortitude
The attitude that education is serious business is a true Zimbabwean thing. From primary to university, there is such a stigma attached to failing examinations in Zimbabwe. Not so in Mzansi. A primary or secondary school learner can anytime decide to take a strange thing called a “gap year” which refers to quitting school for a year and sitting at home. A number of students in South Africa stay away from examinations for such good reasons as that one was not prepared or that there will be another chance next year.
There is also that South African thing where 30 percent and recently 20 percent is considered a pass. One way South Africans are able to tell a Zimbabwean from a South African is the incorrigible interest Zimbabweans generally have in books and learning. It is a true Zimbabwean thing for a student to be caught well after midnight in a high school dormitory, glued on a book. South Africans, generally, find this habit strange. In South Africa an entire class rep can be sent to the lecturer to present the serious complaint that a certain recommended book is too long, a shorter substitute should be found. I know a Zimbabwean accounting lecturer who was reported by the students to the principal for the serious offence that he did not have any jokes to share with the class, being a private college, the principal asked him to look for jokes because the clients were not happy.
Competence and Performance
Attitude and fortitude alone, however, do not explain fully why Zimbabwean educators tend to be such storied subject matter experts that become assets to the institutions around Mzansi. There is that Zimbabwean thing about teachers. Teachers were valued and venerated in Zimbabwean villages and townships. Teachers in the rural areas of Zimbabwe used to receive goats and chickens as tokens of appreciation from happy villagers at the end of each year. In Zimbabwe teachers were taken seriously and took themselves seriously too. So, when a typical Zimbabwean educator gets into class it normally becomes serious business.
The Fetish of Comprehension and Composition
Zimbabwean primary education placed so much importance in the arts of comprehension and composition. Up to secondary school learners were belaboured with the need for them to be able to comprehend passages and also compose their own.
Comprehension and composition work is done in South African primary and secondary schools but not with the prominence and emphasis it gets in a typical Zimbabwean school. Later at university, Zimbabwean students tend to read and understand textbooks and other literatures with more ability than their South African counterparts that were not prepared early enough for the art of drawing meaning from a forest of words. In essay writing too, Zimbabweans tend to display that one quality of Zimbabweans to elucidate things if not beautifully at least powerfully. The arts of comprehension and composition are part of the wealth that Zimbabwean teachers deliver in South African classrooms and lecture rooms, making their educating skills a treasured resource.
Discipline and Commitment
A joke is told that Zimbabweans, when asked by a panel of interviewers to state their expectations from the academic institutions if they happen to get the job, their expectations range from seeking permission to introduce new innovations and teaching methods. A typical South African, however, asks about leave days and payment conditions for overtime and so on.
With a heavy bout of flue or another ailment, a typical Zimbabwean staggers into class kicking and sneezing, to teach, where the usual South African would claim 14 days of sick leave.
Competition
In the South African high school or college, ordinarily, the description of “nerd” or “bookworm” is taken to mean that the individual learner either “has no life” or is “bored or boring.” In Zimbabwe on the other hand, a bookworm was that learner with staying power at study and a nerd was that fellow who was a learner before anything else and had a thing with questions and answers. In Zimbabwean schools academic competition could reach dizzy heights. For that reason, products of Zimbabwean education tend to take all work competitively, an attribute that has made Zimbabwean educators popular with academic institutions in South Africa and elsewhere.
Over and above many things, the attitude that Zimbabwean in general have to education and learning can be credited with the production of versatile educators and scholars that the continent of Africa has learnt to appreciate. There is a way in which education over time became part of Zimbabwean culture.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic based in South Africa: [email protected]
