By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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Our relative in Harare, Brian Hungwe, has recently reported that the Speaker of Zimbabwe’s parliament, Jacob Mudenda, is so irked by the low educational levels of his parliamentarians that he is suggesting that there be a minimum level of education for anyone wishing to become a legislator.

That must come as a surprise to many of us. We have been made to understand that notwithstanding all the turbulence Zimbabwe has had to weather, education has remained the country’s forte, churning out wave after wave of erudite, articulate and self-confident individuals good enough to be world beaters.

To be told now that all one needs to be elected as an MP is to be registered as a voter is a shocking letdown.

Parliamentary work, needless to say, requires that one be able to comprehend what is being discussed; to read and understand the Bills; to navigate the rules of procedure; to make informed interventions on a wide range of topics etc.

It is hard to believe that the land of Uncle Bob Mugabe, he of the Seven Degrees, can allow into parliament people without even a school leaving certificate.

There is, of course, the danger of falling into elitism and thinking that leadership is the preserve and monopoly of those who have received a certain level of knowledge that allows them to actually lead, and that there is no better way of picking out such people than through their academic qualifications. Indeed, how else could they be identified?

Yet, even though I find it hard to support the idea that the totally illiterate can become leaders in today’s world, I still incline to think that one’s academic qualifications are not necessarily the ideal yardstick for leadership

Paper qualifications have given us professors who, to hear them talk, need to go back to at least high school to learn elementary disputation.

So, how does a polity deal with this problem? I think we should be pragmatic and practical. A basic level of literacy and numeracy would appear to me to be a necessary prerequisite, if not for anything else but to inculcate in the minds of our youngsters that school is important.

It has the added advantage that a basic instructional level introduces the recipient to the wonders of new worlds unreached except by those who read books.

That said, we should not overemphasise book knowledge, which must be taken as a prop to support a member of society who has been raised to become useful to self and to society.

A child who is raised ethically will find book knowledge a tool for the betterment of his/her human environment. In the absence of this, all the technical knowledge such a child receives can actually produce a sophisticated cheat or an adept mass murderer.

Education cannot be conferred by degrees, though they sometimes do help. Education is the product of nurturing, of bringing up a caring member of society who respects self and others.

When you witness PhDs and professors in some of our countries who resort to fist-fights, head-butts and flying chairs in parliamentary sessions, you know you are looking at a bunch of uneducated hooligans whose degrees are not worth the paper they are written on.

Brian Hungwe quotes one Member of Parliament in Zimbabwe who is proud of the fact that he is not “educated”—he quit after second grade—but is a successful businessman who uses assistants to help him with his parliamentary duties. If the people he represents think he is doing a good job, who is anyone else to say otherwise?

Our parliaments have greater things to worry about. First is that most of them have become appendages of the government of the day, which fact has blurred the lines between the pillars of state and eroded the function of checks and balances. This aberration does not need university papers to call out.

When the head of the executive usurps functions that belong to parliament and parliament keeps quiet, that is more serious than the issue of MPs without degrees, which I find to be a no-brainer.

Looking at our MPs, their academic qualifications and the way they behave in front of the executive, I have a feeling that maybe we should have fewer degree holders in parliament. Maybe then they will be able to hold our rulers accountable and refuse to be used the way they are used now, as rubber stamps.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]