How Zimbabwe intends to transform its institutions of higher learning

HON. SEN. DR. MAVETERA:  I would want the Minister to probably inform this House and the nation what is actually being done to agriculture because it forms part of our economic revival.  The issue is before the 5.0 which the Minister is referring to, we used to have colleges like Chibero, Gwebi, Mlezu which produced practical agriculture.  The problem at the moment is our students when they are recruited into these tertiary institutions, lack the practical component, which is the attachment because we do not have farmers who can absorb all these.  What is the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education doing to equip. That is where the problem is, the 5.0, yes, we need it – but we were producing practical people before the 3.0.

HON. PROF. MURWIRA:  Thank you very much Madam President.  I want to thank Hon. Sen. Mavetera for that very good question.  Agricultural colleges are the ones that transformed themselves from 5.0 to 3.0 because they were practical, they were doing 5.0.  Madam President, 5.0 is just a framework of understanding.  Before agricultural colleges were very practical and you know that they were a preserve of the few in the past because some people were doing productive education while we were doing the education of remembering.

For now, it is about rediscovering, so our agricultural colleges and faculties of agriculture at universities are going 5.0 and the agricultural colleges have to revert to 5.0 because they were now on 3.0.  That is why they were no longer going to the field.  So, 5.0 was the one which was being practiced by those colleges that they must go back to that. Madam Speaker, 5.0 can sound very nice and sophisticated but it is a very simple concept – it basically means ‘use your mind and your hands at the same time’.  If you use your mind and direct your hands to do the right thing, you are likely to have a developed country.  In actual fact, development is predictable when people are not just using their mind but they are using their hands too in combination.

My issue is that those colleges which were producing graduates that were practical where practicing education 5.0 but they had reverted back to 3.0.  Now, we are taking them back to 5.0.  I hope this explains this seemingly difficult situation. Education 5.0 just means education that produces goods and services not education to speak in English because people can do things when they are speaking in Brazilian, Shona, Ndebele, Venda and so forth. Education is not good English, education is thinking and practicing for production, industrialisation and modernisation of our own country.  I thank you.

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