Exiled former Zimbabwean cabinet Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has also joined a multiplicity of opinion leaders who continue to react to the disqualification of popular cleric, Walter Magaya, to contest in the just-ended ZIFA Elections on the basis that he could not provide his Ordinary Level certificate, which is a prerequisite.
Nqobile Magwizi eventually emerged victorious in a widely disputed poll marred by allegations of vote buying and rampant electoral malpractices.
And, apparently siding with the Prophetic Healing and Deliverance (PHD) ministries leader, Prof Moyo said the Ordinary Level requirement is for ‘school leavers’ or ‘children’, seeking to secure professional carreer paths, and not for adults.
We publish the full text of his opinions, below:
Apropos the earlier post about the irrelevance of an O-Level certificate for adults who have specialised in their chosen lifetime vocations and who have accumulated a track record of their proven skills and experience; and for the avoidance of doubt, the following needs to be said:
An O-Level certificate is for school leavers [in fact children] seeking entry either into higher and tertiary education institutions or vocational training colleges. It should be mandatory for the pupils seeking entry into higher and tertiary education institutions to have a stemitised O-Level certificate with a grade of ‘C’ or better in five subjects that should include mathematics and science. An O-Level certificate is not a job-qualification, but only a qualification for school leavers [children] to pursue continuing education in higher and tertiary education or vocational training colleges.
It is therefore foolish and primitive to demand of grown up adults, especially middle aged adults between the ages of 40 to 65 years old, O-Level certificates as proof of their education.
Imagine the stupidity of asking a Bill gates type of person for an undergraduate degree or high school qualification: to prove what? The practice of taking an O-Level certificate or its equivalent as an important lifetime qualification in education is a colonial hangover common in some former British colonies where an O-Level certificate awarded by Cambridge University used to be treated like a high if not the highest mark of education for Africans. It’s totally colonial thing.
While the O-Level has been localised in many former British colonies, the colonial and slavery mentality attached to it still persists. And that’s even to this day, the Cambridge University O-Level Certificate is still taken as superior to its various local equivalents across former British colonies. But look around the world, you will not find that kind of crass practice in developed or properly developing countries that have freed themselves from mental colonialism and mental slavery, and are leading in the production of intellectual property.
It is backward and silly to ask an adult a qualification for children, like an O-Level certificate.
People and organisations that do that are steeped in the colonial past, playful mental slaves, and dangerous to societal development. There’s a reason old-age wisdom holds that life begins at 40.
By that age, one should have the necessary learning beyond a high school qualification for children, and should have acquired enough specialisation and experience to get serious with life, towards the other side of midnight in their life!
