East Africa: ‘Free Market’ Ruins Workers’ Education

The education system is in crisis not only in Tanzania but in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Latin America, the U.S. and the worldwide. The crisis is caused by the fact that the schools are in the hands of the bosses. The bosses control of education leads to inequalities in the system, the haves and have-nots. 
In the colonial era the educational system worsened in the African states because it was based on “races.” Whites were favored as were certain tribes that the colonialists chose to prepare for managerial and professional duties. Most of the schools were built in urban areas where whites used to live.
After independence the masses thought that the educational system would improve but it remained a cursed system on the African continent and in the world at large. Education remained a commodity in which the sons and daughters of the rich got better education, especially in private schools owned by the bosses, while the poorer majority failed to get any education at all.  In 1985, Tanzania succumbed to the pressures of neocolonialism and became a “free market economy.”  Through the UN’s machinery, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and UNESCO, education became too expensive for most Tanzanians.
The IMF imposed conditions on the Tanzanian government.  In order to get aid they had to cut back on government expenditures, like public education, health services, public transportation, and communication.  They caused the stagnation of technology by draining Tanzania of its experts, like professors, doctors, engineers.  Their offers of investment were tied to the importation of their expensive finished goods.
The net result of these policies means that today about 85 percent of Standard Three pupils in government schools are unable to read Kiswahili and solve mathematics problems (Zaida Mgalla). Mgalla reports that English performance is even poorer. Her results show that vast numbers of children are not acquiring basic skills in primary education. Ms. Mgalla said, “We are in a society of two classes. The privileged with more wealth who can afford private schooling do much better than most people. When it comes to education, Tanzania is not one nation.”  The reforms that she calls for could never succeed since the system is still owned by the bosses. 
Education is serving the imperialist system that blocks true economic advancement for the masses. Teachers and students need to form an alliance to fight for free and equal education for all, to end employment benefits for some while others face a lifetime of insecurity, for a good supply of food to the students, for extra-curricular activities for students to keep them physically fit and mentally stable.  
As this alliance organizes struggles, PLP has an oppurtunity to build a truly international party in East Africa and to win workers and students to the idea that a profit system will never truly educate the working class. We must seize power from the bosses in order to end classes and free us from exploitation.  Then education will be for and by those who actually create all value in society: the working class.