From Neoliberalism to Kleptocracy: Two Decades of Educational Turmoil in Zimbabwe

• In Event: Roundtable Session 59
  In Roundtable Session: Education Policies and Reform in Africa and in the Caribbean

Abstract

From structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s to elitist indigenization since 2000, this paper assesses the devastation caused by these global and local capitalist development frameworks on the educational opportunities of Zimbabwe’s vulnerable groups. This was a critical interpretive case study of the University of Zimbabwe and the Great Zimbabwe University. As an activist researcher, this research involved interaction with student leaders and faculty, with the major objective of conscientizing the participants on the devastation of home grown neoliberalism clothed in the language of indegenity. In a way this underlines the contention that research for the purposes of knowledge production is not sufficient, there is urgent need to use theoretical knowledge to conscientize participants and consequently inform and shape advocacy.

Author

• Munyaradzi Hwami, University of Alberta