Zimbabwe: Teachers, Students, Doctors, Nurses All on Strike
, OneWorld US Wed Feb 21, 1:58 PM ET
Zimbabwe's education and healthcare sectors are lying almost completely dormant this week, and government repression of political opponents continues.
A strike looms as the nation's teachers and government officials remain far apart on salary negotiations. The government's latest offer is still less than half the so-called Poverty Datum Line, and a 1600-percent inflation rate has turned most of the country's 180,000 civil servants into paupers, according to the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper.
University lecturers are already on strike, as are the country's higher education students.
Last week, some 74 students and their leaders were rounded up, assaulted, and detained, according to the International Union of Students, which released a statement supporting its Zimbabwean peers.
More than 40 were arrested following a meeting to discuss "issues of the ever deteriorating standards of education, the astronomical hikes in tuition fees, and broader socio-economic and political pandemonium in Zimbabwe." The Zimbabwe National Students Union says that "more than 600 innocent, unarmed, and hungry students who had gathered on campus for the Extraordinary General Meeting were violently and brutally dispersed by the ruthless riot police and the non-uniformed state security agents."
But students are not the only Zimbabweans to have faced the truncheons in recent days.
A Valentine's Day march sponsored by the group Women of Zimbabwe Arise was met by police with tear gas outside the Parliament building in Harare.
And as one of the country's main opposition parties attempted to launch its presidential campaign with a public rally in the capital Monday, police fired tear gas and water cannons containing irritating chemicals and beat opposition supporters with batons.
A spokesperson for the opposition party claimed that more than 500 of its supporters had been beaten and severe injuries were sustained. There were unconfirmed reports of three deaths.
But perhaps the most difficult problem facing both the Zimbabwean government and its estranged citizens is the near-total collapse of the national health system.
Many of the country's doctors and nurses have quit working in recent weeks to demand higher wages and better conditions.
"Hundreds of people are dying every week due to lack of healthcare since the doctors' industrial action began on December 21 last year, bringing the health delivery system, already battered by a collapsing economy, to a near-total halt," reports Florence Cheda for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
One province recently reported that it had only one doctor to service 4 million people--and that was before the strike.
While government officials fly to South Africa and other countries for their own medical treatment, says Cheda, "Zimbabweans are left wondering how much longer the nation and international community [will] continue to watch so many of their relatives, friends, and others die unnecessarily."