Today, (5 October 2025) ,we celebrate the extraordinary dedication of Zimbabwe’s teachers, the architects of our nation’s future. While we honor your unwavering commitment, this year’s theme, “Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession,” demands more than gratitude. It calls for a radical transformation of our profession through solidarity, collective bargaining, and joint action to secure the dignity and resources we deserve.
Collaboration: Our Path to Educational Excellence
True collaboration, free from political division, can revolutionize Zimbabwe’s classrooms.
We must build;
1. Mentorship Networks: Seasoned teachers guiding new graduates, sharing wisdom across generations.
2. Shared Expertise Hubs: Digital repositories for lesson plans and masterclasses, bridging urban-rural divides.
3. Mobile Resource Brigades: Schools pooling labs and equipment for STEM fairs in underserved communities.
4. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): Teachers co-planning lessons and refining strategies together.
5. Cross-School Subject Associations: National networks to elevate teaching practices in math, science, and languages.
These structures thrive only in an environment of trust and unity not surveillance. Divisive initiatives like “Teachers for ED” poison our schools, sabotage collaboration, and ultimately harm our students.
Collaboration as Emancipation: Our Collective Power
Collaboration isn’t just pedagogical, it’s also political. To dismantle exploitation, we must:
1. Unite in Collective Bargaining: Negotiate as one voice for living wages, adequate learning materials, and safe classrooms.
2. Mobilize Collective Job Actions: Strategically coordinate work stoppages, protests, and advocacy to demand policy changes.
3. Build Cross Union Alliances: Partner with parents, students, and labor movements to amplify our struggle.
Our strength lies in our numbers. When teachers collaborate beyond school walls, refusing to be divided by geography, experience, or political pressure we become an unstoppable force for systemic change.
Join Us: From Celebration to Mobilization
We invite you to the ARTUZ Sports Day on 22 November in Gweru, not just for recreation, but to fortify our collective resolve. This is where we:
1. Strategize for upcoming bargaining sessions
2. Coordinate actions for better working conditions
3. Strengthen the networks that make our profession unbreakable.
Our Demand
On this Teachers’ Day, we declare:
1. Dissolve “Teachers for ED” and all partisan programs that fracture our unity. Education cannot flourish in an atmosphere of fear.
2. Pay teachers a fair wage in line with the constitution and reverse teacher attrition where 1 200 teachers are leaving the profession monthly.
3. Incorporate rights to collective job actions and collective bargaining in the coming Public Service Act.
To Every Teacher
Your passion lights our future. Now, let’s unite to ignite a movement. Together, through collaboration and collective action, we will reclaim our profession’s dignity and secure the schools Zimbabwe’s children deserve.
Happy Teachers’ Day! Our liberation is collective or it is nothing.
ARTUZ INFORMATION DEPARTMENT
📧ruraltrsunion@gmail.com
📞+263777473135/776219336/775643192
Follow us @: ARTUZ_ teachers