By Nqaba Matshazi
I recently read that the United Kingdom offered Zimbabwe
money for education after the Zimbabwean government indicated it had no money
to fund schooling for its less privileged children.
While the gesture is welcome, as children, whom we often
describe as innocent to appeal to our emotions, won’t miss out on school, here
lies our problem, as Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular.
For all their generosity – whatever the intentions – I
believe western governments should stop sending such aid to any African
government. Our governments should be able to find money for such things as
health and education without having to beg from anyone – that is their
responsibility.
If our governments cannot fund such basics, then what are
they good for and why are they still in power?
Coming from Zimbabwe, terms like “defending our
sovereignty”, “fighting imperialism and neo-colonialism” have become national
anthems and rallying calls. But what good is sovereignty when we can’t fund our
own students? What good is the fight against neo-colonialism and imperialism
when we go to the same so-called imperialists and colonialists to beg for money
to fund our education?
We have lost our voices singing the motto “African solutions
for African problems”, yet at the slightest hint of a problem, we run to
Britain begging it to solve our education problems. Utter hypocrisy. These
statements have become nothing but hollow nationalist slogans that are not
worth the podiums they are chanted from.
A year ago, our mines minister told us that we won’t have to
beg again, money from diamond revenue will fund all our needs, including
education. Barely 12 months later, we are begging Britain, our supposed
coloniser, our worst enemy that is supposedly pushing a colonial agenda and the
embodiment of all things evil, to fund our education. I find this astounding.
If Britain is seriously the imperialist that we have been
made to believe it is, then we have given it a blank cheque to re-colonise us,
as they have a direct to our minds through the money they are giving us for
education.
While we should be grateful to Britain for funding our
education, such funds help mask the problems and stop us from asking the
questions we should be really asking our leaders and this takes away our agency
as citizens.
While the aid is welcome, the downside is that it has helped
our government hide its shortcomings and until that aid goes, we might never
know where our problems lie. When the politicking starts and when elections are
due, our politicians will remind us how many pupils they enrolled in schools
and how well our education is doing, but they won’t tell us that this is not
not of their own doing.
On our part, we will vote for them, no matter how poor they
have been in public office, because such funds from western nations have helped
disguise most defects we have, and this cycle will continue until Kingdom come.
I am not a big fan of donor aid, and this might not be a
very popular stance, but at least in critical areas such as food security,
health and education, we should be funding ourselves not looking for external
solutions.
Donor aid helps paper over our shortcomings and my biggest
worry is what will happen when that aid is suddenly withdrawn. At some point we
have to be responsible and stop behaving like an overgrown child that is
refusing to be weaned off its parents (read former colonisers).
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Nqaba Matshazi (@nqabamatshazi) is a Pan African Zimbabwean
journalist, with a passion for news, sport and politics.
This article first appeared in Africa on the Blog
This is a guest post; views may not represent that of ECDPM
Photo Courtesy of Drew Robinson
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