Zimbabwe’s eight-year long political, social and economic turmoil is undoing all the successes that the country had recorded since it attained independence from British colonial rule in 1980.
Now it threatens to destroy its future too, as hordes of disgruntled teachers are opting to abandon pupils in search of greener pastures anywhere outside the borders of their homeland.
In September 2007, Maidei Madu, 27, a primary school teacher in eastern Zimbabwe, finally packed her bags and headed to neighboring South Africa, as many had done before her.
She took a three-month leave from her job on the pretext that she was going to see her husband who had emigrated to South Africa three months earlier. But the truth was she had no intention of coming back to her beleaguered homeland. She was going for good to find a job in South Africa.
Thousand of teachers across Zimbabwe are deserting their jobs over poor pay and working conditions, leaving pupils unattended. Teachers currently earn US$17 a month, a paltry figure, which cannot help them to cope with the country’s hyperinflation.
Consequently, hordes of teachers are leaving. Zimbabwe has lost many of its skilled and highly educated professionals over the past decade to both neighboring and far-flung countries.
When teachers like Madu choose to go look for jobs elsewhere, they do not give any notice of resignation or retirement. They simply abscond, making it difficult for the government to keep track in order to find replacements.
According to Zimbabwean Ministry of Education officials, finding replacements for absconding teachers is nearly impossible as the country is facing a shortage of teachers.
"We are working on raising teachers’ salaries to curb this exodus and something will be done soon. We do not like it either, so very soon things will be better in the education sector. We know the plight of our teachers," said Zimbabwe’s Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere.
"What is happening is that teachers are being poached by our neighboring countries. I even have advertisements in the papers from the neighboring countries advertising for our science and mathematics teachers and this is why they are absconding."
The high levels of education and training of Zimbabwean teachers (as well as other professionals) make them attractive in many countries around the world.
With inflation hovering above 8,000 percent and rising, it is clear that the government will not be able to meet the ever-growing salary demands of teachers.
Apart from that, food and fuel shortages, electricity cuts, and lack of teaching materials have all but left teachers, and many other professionals, in a place where they cannot properly execute their roles.
As a way to curb the exodus of teachers, President Robert Mugabe’s government recently announced that it would ask its Southern African neighbors to stop poaching Zimbabwean teachers.
The Zimbabwean government also recently resolved to bond newly qualified teachers and now requires neighboring countries to approach it before employing Zimbabwean teachers as part of measures to mitigate the brain drain in the education sector.
Whatever the case, it is Zimbabwe’s future that stands to lose the most, and urgent action is required to stop the bleeding of a once-prosperous nation.