The Ministry of Primary Secondary Education says it has nothing to do with an alleged instruction to school heads and teachers that yellow colours were now banned in schools.
Teachers’ unions said they were inundated with messages from members claiming they were verbally instructed to avoid wearing yellow during working hours.
Yellow is the main colour used by the opposition Citizens’ Convergence of Coalition (CCC). By wearing yellow, teachers would be inadvertently showing their allegiance to CCC, it was alleged.
Speaking to Pindula News recently, the president of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) Takafavira Zhou confirmed receiving the reports. He said:
Teachers across the country are reporting that the matter was discussed but we haven’t received a formal communication ourselves.
In fact, there are some schools that are being told to change their uniforms. In case someone is planning to put it into writing, we say this decree is a nullity, schools cannot change uniforms on the basis that a new political party wears the same colour.
What came first the school uniform or CCC? The law doesn’t operate in retrospection.
Bulawayo24 quoted Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education spokesperson Taungana Ndoro as saying they have not issued such a directive. Said Ndoro:
That has nothing to do with the government, we have nothing to do with colour, yellow, red or whatever we only know CALA (Continuous Assessment Learning Activity) and our mandate is to provide quality education in the country. It is just that somebody got over-excited.