During my recent visit to Tafara suburb distributing the vendor wrapper with Zanele, we came across a private primary school. Some people may ask what’s so special about this school since in most suburbs there has been an upsurge in the number of private schools operating. What really attracted me to this school is the fact that nowadays it’s impossible to find someone who can volunteer to offer a service for no charge.

Chiedza/Khanyiso is a private school situated in Tafara suburb with another branch in Sunningdale. Founded in the year 2005 under the name Chiedza/Khanyiso which means light, the school is a symbol for hope to so many little children attending lessons.  The school enrols children from grade one up to six and the fascinating part is the way lessons are conducted at this school. There are two building structures, one is a church building without a roof and the other structure that looked like it was about to fall down, has benches made from wooden poles and it has no floor. Grade ones and twos share the makeshift building and lessons are conducted concurrently with grades three up six doing their lessons in one room in the roofless church building.

During my interview with Mr Chikwanha who is the overseer of the school, he said, “the main motivation behind running a school like Chiedza/Khanyiso is to assist children without birth certificates and those who can’t pay fees at government schools.” Mr Chikwanha a former teacher with over 40 years experience runs the school with assistance from two female volunteer teachers who showed pride in their work when we interviewed them. When we got the invitation to see the grade one and two classroom we saw faces filled with joy and hope. On the issue of birth certificates Mr Chikwanha said he approached the Registrar General’s Office and he managed to get assistance and some the children at school now have birth certificates. The school also gets assistance from the Salvation Army Church, which owns the church building being used as a classroom, and recently they received a donation of school uniforms from Childline. Since we are now in summer there is a possibility that these children will skip lessons during rainy days.

Children pay a fee of $5 per term and this only covers admin expenses for the school with little to spare to buy textbooks and proper furniture said Mr Chikwanha. Under Millennium Development Goal Number 2, which aims to ensure that all children of school going age have access to primary education by the year 2015, one wonders if Zimbabwe can meet the deadline as most parents are still finding it difficult to pay school fees for their children. With the introduction of BEAM (Basic Education Assistance Module) in all government schools not all children have managed to access this fund and this has forced many parents to send their children to private schools like Chiedza/Khanyiso where they can afford to pay the low fees.

Corruption has been a major setback to development in Zimbabwe. Corruption can be done either by men or by women and corruption is now everywhere in our country whether in high offices or on the streets. People now take corruption as a short cut to get a service, product or even an opportunity to earn a living. Corruption cuts across race, class, religion and sex.

The Sunday Mail of 31 of October 2010 featured a story titled  “Rushwaya: Wrong place at the right time” by Hellen Venganai, a gender development analyst. The author of the story suggested that the former Zimbabwe Football Association CEO was recently relieved of her duties because of her gender in a male dominated environment.

Before she was appointed ZIFA CEO, Henrietta Rushwaya was the co-ordinator for the national soccer team fundraising committee, and during that period she did a splendid job mobilising funds at a time when the men’s senior soccer team was having financial problems. Her break through came when she was appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer at ZIFA. With a success record in fundraising at hand many people were happy to have Henrietta take up the position not because she is woman but because of her credentials. When the corruption scandal exploded at ZIFA I believe we have read about influential people who are in the ZIFA board also being implicated in the scandal.

The only problem I have over Mrs Rushwaya’s sacking is that instead of firing just one person and making a headline story out of it, the whole ZIFA body should just do the nation a favour and leave, so that sanity can prevail in our lovely game of soccer in this country. It takes more than one person for corruption to take place, so all those who took part in the corruption scandal should face the full wrath of the law. Currently the ZIFA executive is lined up with faces that also took part in the corruption scandal but they still have their jobs.

I am not the one to judge whether Rushwaya is guilty or not.  In Zimbabwe we are campaigning for equal representation so that the field of play can be the same for both women and men. So in order to set a good example lets not condone corrupt activities even if women do them. Some theories argue that women are less corrupt than men because they care about their image more than men do. Women pay attention to what others think about them, but men think about how powerful others perceive them to be. These theories may be true or not true. No literature supports the idea that women are less corrupt than men. Let’s learn to call a spade a spade and deal with corruption accordingly.  Otherwise we will end up with plenty of cases involving women giving the same reason Hellen Venganai is trying to come up with of saying that  “Rushwaya was implicated because she was working in a male dominated environment”.

My recent visit to Nyanga left me wondering if we still have a pleasant and refreshing atmosphere in the eastern highlands. The evergreen mountainous places of Nyanga are now characterized by smoke caused by veld fires. Lately there has been an upsurge in uncontrolled burning in both urban and rural areas causing massive amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

People are starting fires for no apparent reason. If you travel from Harare to Beitbridge and from Mutare to Harare both sides of the roads are burning. During this time of the year some people in farming areas are burning their fields in preparation of the new farming season. Due to the fact that firewood is now being used as a substitute for coal when curing tobacco most farmers who cannot afford to buy coal on the local market resort to cutting down trees. Most of these trees are indigenous trees, which take many years to grow.

In recent years Zimbabwe has been experiencing droughts and floods in some parts of the country, mostly being caused by changes in weather patterns and also global warming. It does not make sense for one to start a fire, which destroys hectares of land in pursuit of a buck.

In Zimbabwe we have the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and also environmental management agencies that can assist in information dissemination and advocacy for best practices on managing our environment. A lot has to be done in educating our folks both in the rural and urban communities on the effects of global warming and climate change. The Government needs to take issues of climate change seriously and provide a budget to assist local authorities and agencies

The time to act is now or else we will find ourselves importing timber, or even grass for thatching. I am a Zimbabwean who loves an open-air braai but I don’t want to be seen coming from the north of the Zambezi or the south of Limpopo with a truckload of charcoal and firewood for my braai.

Lets not wait for the worst to happen to convince us that the climate really is changing. And we all have to do something about it.