On 20 August 2025, Newsday reported on a communiqué issued after the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) held its general membership meeting. The document blended members’ lived experiences with statistics from our research department. In response, Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education spokesperson Taungana Ndoro disputed several of our findings.
Let us be clear: our work is not a declaration of war. It is an effort to help fix a public education system that is visibly deteriorating. We collect data every month in 40 districts and produce quarterly updates on key indicators. These reports are routinely sent to the Ministry. The numbers we shared in our Newsday interview come directly from that evidence base.
One of the most worrying trends is the ongoing teacher exodus. Mr. Ndoro dismissed the brain drain as “fake.” It is not. District reports show many teachers are actively considering leaving, and 1,200 are leaving monthly. This data is verifiable; Ndoro did not offer alternative facts, because he knows that the Union’s findings are on point. If conditions do not improve, we risk a repeat of the 2006–2008 wave, when classrooms were abandoned and skills drained to the diaspora. Our children will pay the price.
The Ministry points to the number of graduates eager to join the profession. We welcome every new teacher who wants to serve. But using unemployed graduates as a reserve force—especially when those still in schools consider industrial action—does not solve the crisis. Years of job freezes, driven by a neoliberal fixation on cost-cutting, have produced a glut of qualified but unemployed teachers and punishing workloads for those in service. The remedy is straightforward: recruit. Hire all qualified graduates and ease the burden in our classrooms.
Connectivity is another fault line. Ndoro dismissed our findings that 80% of schools have no access to “reliable” internet and electricity. He threw data of 52.49% and 39.9% of connectivity for secondary and rural schools respectively. Some schools that are said to be connected do not use the internet because of costs. The connection is not reliable because of intermittent supply of electricity. The 80% stands.
Funds collected under the Universal Service Fund should be used to connect schools in marginalized areas. It is simply untrue that “most” schools are online. Policy cannot be Harare-centric; we urge the Ministry to pursue 80% internet coverage across Zimbabwe, not just in the capital. For our part, we have piloted “internet-in-a-box” solutions to help rural learners access educational materials, but stopgaps are no substitute for a national plan.
We appreciate the policy allowing pregnant learners to remain in school, but implementation is lagging. Teachers need practical training and support to handle these cases with dignity and consistency. Ndoro insists that the law allows pregnant learners to learn, but the practice is to the contrary. Meanwhile, school feeding remains more promise than practice. Hungry children cannot learn; this, too, demands urgent attention.
Because these failures are systemic, we have called for a National Transition Authority—not to advance party politics, but to get the country working again. For the avoidance of doubt: we are not a political party, nor do we seek to become one. We are educators insisting on solutions.
Finally, our figures are not concocted. If the Ministry doubts them, it can conduct its own research—or simply read what we have already compiled in our quarterly publication, Zimpulse: Quarterly Compass on Universal Access to Inclusive Quality Education in Zimbabwe. We stand ready to share data, compare notes, and work together to rebuild a system our children deserve.
By Gerald Tavengwa
ARTUZ Secretary for Education and Research.
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