Everyone has the right to education in society. Zimbabwe started to think outside the box. Zimbabwe now accepts livestock to pay for their children’s education. This involved bartering without the use of money. Many people think that Bartering is outdated as the double coincidence of wants is impossible to achieve. You have to find someone who is willing to exchange something you want to get rid of.
Swapping is becoming popular. With many websites providing facilities for swapping. You can exchange anything from clothes to video games. Dr Lazarud Dokora, the minister in Zimbabwe responsible for primary and secondary education said parents can offer livestock as payment for education or do chores for schools. He also states that schools must be flexible and wants to ensure that thos who cannot afford fees can work.
The country’s education minister Lazarus Dokora told the pro-government Sunday Mail newspaper that schools will have to show flexibility when it comes to demanding tuition fees from parents, and that they should accept not only livestock, but also services and skills. “If there is a builder in the community, he/she must be given that opportunity to work as a form of payment of tuition fees,” the paper quoted him as saying.
He said “on the issue of livestock, the community has to arrange a market where everyone participates; from the school authorities, local leadership and parents themselves to avoid being duped”
Zimbabwe’s worsening cash crisis means that people frequently spend hours queueing at banks to withdraw cash. The government says the shortage is due to people taking hard currency out of the country, but critics say it’s due to lack of investment and rising unemployment.
For more than a year, Zimbabwe has been battling an acute shortage of US dollars. Banks have been forced to impose withdrawal limits in order to equitably dispense the scarce bank notes available, while cutting down on the use of international bank cards.
The central bank has also limited cash allowed for travelling outside the country to $1,000, while it has drawn up a payments priority list of how it will allocate the scarce dollars for the payment of critical goods and services.
Trading livestock for education is a reflection of the failed economic policies of this regime. It shows how far things have collapsed; people are now forced to use livestock and are reverting back to a barter economy
The problem is that school heads and teachers are trained educationists and are not farmers. The prospect of hundreds of parents turning up with livestock such as goats to pay for school fees is very problematic. All it does is simply shift the pressure of finding cash from parents to teachers, which will have the problem of converting goats into cash in order to buy things such as chalk, books and other teaching aids.
Teachers unions worry that their employer might make an about-turn and offer the livestock as payment for salaries.
“It’s inevitable where there is too little cash circulating, and all this shows real desperation,” said Gundani as he pointed out that Zimbabwe was losing much of its liquidity through imports, illicit outflows, and cash hoarding.
