Desperate Teachers Eat Pupils’ Food

“We have no option but to share the porridge with our pupils, for us to survive and also for the energy to teach them,” said Jeffrey Gumbo, a teacher at Mutenda primary school. “There is widespread hunger and starvation and we have not been spared, so we have to eat anything we get in order to escape hunger.”

He said there was a severe scarcity of grain in the area such that sometimes they spent several days without eating sadza (Zimbabwe’s staple maize meal). The teachers said they could not afford to buy the grain that is being sold in foreign currency by local businesspeople who draw allocations from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB).

“With the current drought situation, grain has become a rare commodity here. We go for days without eating sadza,” he said. “Imagine a bag of grain is costing R300 and with my salary I can’t afford to buy even half a bag.” Another teacher at a school in Mapanzure, who also survives on porridge meant for school children, praised organizations like Christian Care and the Red Cross for saving people’s lives in the province. “When we heard that the ban on food aid was lifted, we breathed a sigh of relief because we knew food would be coming to school children and we will be saved. If this was not the situation some teachers here would starve to death,” said a teacher, who declined to be named.

Takavafira Zhou, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) president, said government had forced teachers to depend on donated food: