At the Warren Park High School in a western working-class suburb of Harare, dozens of students waited for their teachers in vain at an unfinished school building.
Some wore face masks. A 20-litre bucket of hand sanitiser was placed at the school entrance.
At another government school in the upper-class Avondale district, no teachers were in sight and primary pupils played outside classrooms.
Teachers “did not turn up for duty,” Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of one of the country’s largest unions, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, told AFP.
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Majongwe said teachers battle to “survive” and that they can’t even afford to send their own children to school.
Teachers’ salaries, he said, have been heavily eroded by inflation — which stands at over 700 percent — to an average equivalent of $40 a month, down from $550 in October 2018.
“Forty dollars is an insult. Teachers have lost their ranking in society. It’s actually an insult to be a teacher. It’s a curse,” he said.
Zimbabwe is being buffeted by its worst economic crisis in over a decade and is grappling with hyperinflation.
AFP