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Gibson Nyikadzino Correspondent

Zimbabwean teachers last week were rushing around in search of information about Britain’s recruitment call that is targeting educators from three African countries of Botswana, South Africa and from here in the land of the Mutapa, starting next February.

That is what happens in a global village, there is interdependence. However, in this case, a response to the recruitment call is neither one based on interdependence nor opportunities in a borderless society.

The sun is setting on Britain, a superpower of the old times whose economic success story was built by slave labour, is on the verge of economic collapse.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that Britain’s economic growth in 2023 will be less than 0,3 percent.

This is catastrophic for country yet to recover from a prolonged impact of Covid-19 related issues for over two years, a country experiencing high inflation and overall recession. This has destroyed all hopes of economic revival.

There is a wave of proletariat revolution going on in Britain, the worst economic anger in 30 years. National strikes have been going on since last month and they are involving teachers, railway workers, bus drivers, nurses, health care, border control and airport workers.

This British economic insecurity has been factor by at least four scenarios that are causing its national chaos in the effects of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, the West and NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the wrong decisions by the British government and its officials.

The economic disorder is a result of the failure of the British government’s antagonism of the natural economic order through the use of artificial economic prescriptions leading to many of their professionals abandoning their jobs which Britain want filled by other nationals, including Zimbabweans.

It is under such hard, difficult and unchanging economic conditions that Zimbabwean educators are expected to work, earning about £2 400, which is heavily-taxed and be given to the King, and much being spent on daily needs, and the ever rising energy cost.

Willing economic slaves?

At the same time, public commentary made by some leaders of teachers “unions” to the recruitment call signalled the willingness they have into sending their colleagues to economic slavery.

It should be highlighted that going for such a job does not qualify one to be an economic refugee, but is ready to be enslaved.

When Zimbabweans or foreigners get these jobs, British citizens will also start complaining that “foreigners are taking our jobs” because the conditions of service that will be taken by foreigners will be less desirable than what is expected. Racism and or xenophobia will abound.

With another elasticity of the mind, these are the same people who in September 2021 met with representatives of the British government as confirmed by Lord Ahmad, the UK Minister of State.

There is evidence that suggest that Britain’s economic fortunes were driven by slave labour. Evidence suggests that by facilitating that slave trade, Britain’s involvement played a part that shaped Africa in terms of economic outcomes.

Defenders of slavery argue that enslaving African’s was integral to establishing Britain as a world economic power back then. Today, the same slavery is being initiated under the guise of the movement of goods, services and labour, when in essence, labour importation to Britain is kick-starting the economy that is in ICU.

Other nationalities welcome in Britain, other than the three from Africa are Jamaicans, Singaporeans and Indians among others. This is the rebirth of a slave-labour-run-economy that is ready to entice Africans so they trade their freedoms with market exploitation.

A morally faltering state

Picture this scenario: “You have found a job as a teacher in Britain and you relocate with your family. One of your kids in mid-primary school is in a new environment where he or she is being taught by a confirmed gay, lesbian or transgender teacher.”

Raising this scenario is not discriminatory. It is a reality that is being countenanced by many Africans who are sold a dummy that life is good socially with inclusive moral principles.

This presents a culture-shock experience that children of most Zimbabweans have found themselves in. That alone has a huge bearing on the mental health of people who might have grown without experiencing that “immoral” environment.

The British government’s primary and secondary public education systems is muddled.

In the name of inclusion, they have characteristically overlooked issues of morality and furthermore given more rights to children than teachers; British leaders and their Western allies are also influencing the United Nations to incorporate “sex education” content that seeks to normalise acceptance of gay, lesbian and transgender “rights” from the primary stage of societal development.

When foreigners are invited to breathe life into the British education system, it does not mean the country is having a shortage of labour, but that professionals in that sector are giving up on their system and want to delegate the responsibility of mending the broken characters of their pupils on other people.

It should be noted that it is unfathomable to assume that there is a shortage of teachers for a country that has at least one university in every town.

There is no need to be philosophical about it, educators who wish to go to Britain on impulse can be forgiven for they do not know what they will be doing. Such are the failures of a people to envision a system they want their children to inherit.

It was Immanuel Wallerstein who remarked that “man’s ability to participate intelligently in the evolution of his own system is dependent on his ability to perceive the whole.”

There is more contribution through intelligent participation that is needed by all of Zimbabwe’s human capital in the framing of the values we want for the future generation based on morality and not driven by the trappings of commercial benefits.

But for the West to promote through legislature the unnatural biological phenomena and attach it to the education curriculum makes, chiefly Britain, a failing state and a frontier of moral decay.

The issue of children’s rights in Britain when spoken in the context of education is a national disaster. This is the disaster some Zimbabweans want to assume.

What is to be done?

There is more to see of what is happening in the context of Zimbabwe’s re-engagement policy, especially in relation with getting back into the Commonwealth and normalising relations with Britain.

By openly wanting to recruit such a huge personnel outside the scope of engaging on a government-to-government basis when aware of Zimbabwe’s re-engagement policy, Britain appears to be deriving pleasure in wanting to induce the flight of brain power.

This is not only happening in the education sector, but also in the health sector where Britain is targeting critical human resources and translate their services to helping rebooting their economy.

Such is how the British are applying a double embargo on Zimbabwe, one that is economic and another that is human capital based. Seeing Zimbabwe rise may not be what the West is ready to see, but is feasible.

If Zimbabwe is to see the true success story of Education 5.0 and the revival of the health sector, Government has to continuously unfreeze teaching or nursing posts so that trained personnel get jobs.

More so, both those in the education and health sectors should be subjected to professional progression, where they serve for a minimum number of years before they are made to resign or go for other jobs.

Consequently, investments in education and science are the most productive and profitable ones to bring about and usher the special of knowledge in the economy.

The biggest need is to have them reinvest the knowledge they got from the Government training initiatives. That process should take time. It is less desirable to train professionals for other nations.

While engagements between Zimbabwe and Britain should continue and as a sign of thawing relations, labour movement programmes should be facilitated through government agreements so that Zimbabwe also protects the labour rights of its citizens through mutual cooperation.

For Zimbabwe, it is evident that economic development has always been primarily determined by the human factor, that is, human capital improved by education. The most decisive tool to economic development is having a well-educated, skilled, innovative and disciplined manpower.

Zimbabweans, remember we are one. This is homeland!