Zimbabwe spends more on trips than education

Zimbabwe's government last year spent $45million on travel abroad and only $14.8million on schools. Actually, I'm surprised they spent that much on schools, seeing as the Mugabe government is broke (but they can find the money to get on planes and go on shopping and medical trips). Not that the 'opposition' is any better. The MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, are just as guilty. They can make all the noises they like about Mugabe but come payday they will turn out just like their previous boss, or like the ANC in South Africa. African Blacks can't rule. They are a tribal people and Zimbabwe - and eventually South Africa - will return to a tribal subsistence existence as per their cultural make-up. That is why western democracy will never work in Africa under Black governments. Under White governments both countries were relatively successful and both thrived. We see today the result of this Black tribal leadership as both countries go from their glory days to African hellholes. The Black tribal instinct is also why communism thrives under their rule. However, my real beef here is that Western countries pumped $24 million aid into Zimbabwean schools. Why? It's time that the West stops interfering and stops propping dictatorships up with money. It only prolongs the inevitable and causes more damage to the country in the meantime. This is how Mugabe funds his lifestyle - with Western dollars whilst his people starve. Better to leave well alone and let them implode and the sooner the better. Only then will Zimbabwe have a chance again - maybe.

Zimbabwe's coalition government spent three times more on foreign junkets for top government officials in 2011 than on schooling, Education Minister David Coltart said on Friday.

According to the minister, Zimbabwe in 2011 spent $14.8m on its 3 000 schools, excluding salaries.

President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, along with their officials, racked up $45m in travel expenses abroad, Coltart told dpa.

"It's shameful," Coltart said. "The infrastructure in our schools is in crisis. We are undermining the education of an entire generation."

Coltart is a member of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party, which has been in an uneasy coalition with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party since 2009.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, also from the MDC, had revealed previously that Mugabe's trips - with delegations of up to 80 people - cost the country $20.6m last year. He says he is powerless to contain the president's travel.

Government officials are also accused by Zimbabwean watchdogs of going abroad for shopping sprees at taxpayers' expense. The 88-year-old president, believed to be recovering from cancer, frequently travels to the Far East for medical treatments.

After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe, led by Mugabe - who was a school teacher before becoming a liberation fighter - built up its education system to be one of the best in Africa.

But the country is only now starting to recover from an economic collapse in 2008 - when inflation hit 500 billion percent. The national currency crashed and government services ground to a halt. Schools were shut down for much of the year.

Economists say Mugabe's policies of the last 15 years, including the seizures without compensation of white-owned farms, caused the tailspin.

Last year, Western governments pumped $24m of aid into Zimbabwe's schools, including a programme to provide 523 million textbooks for pupils.


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