The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi
THE NASH leadership is adorable. It’s Standing Committee comprising the maverick, hard-talking strategist, Mr Johnson Madhuku-head Pamushana in Bikita; penetrating thinker, quiet, sober, severe-looking and calculating vice-president — Mr A Maposa; smart, clever, and shrewd goal-getter- Mr Moses Mukoyi-school head- St Faith’s (Rusape) and Mr S Madebwe- NASH ‘Minister of Finance & Economic Planning” is a formidable force.
You only need to look in Animal Farm and Julius Caesar. You will see all of them in these two great pieces of Literature and wonder who is who in which book.
Those who have carefully read these books will agree, in them you find strategists, powerful public speakers, thinkers and achievers. Only those with a critical eye and ear for minute verbal detail can understand them easily.
The rest will cheer and celebrate even if they don’t get a word of what they are saying and what they mean.
That is only an opinion. Like Mr Mukoyi, the secretary general, I am also a literature teacher-writer with an unforgivable obsession for Literature and critical thinking.
This week I will give you an idea of what Mr Madhuku had for ‘his’ army of education commanders at the NASH Conference in Kariba recently:
2.12. Education change depends on what teachers do and think, and this means that the teacher mustn’t be bypassed by way of reaching out to the learner.
2.13. The point is, the updated curriculum is ours, and we have to support it and ensure its success. We can’t be agents of change when we have not changed ourselves. Similarly, we cannot teach and expect our learners to leave the education system with exit skills like critical thinking, problem solving, leadership skills etc. and national identity profiles like patriotism, values like discipline, integrity, honesty, Unhu, when we ourselves don’t have and don’t exhibit such profiles.
2.16 TWO MINDSETS: We should also remember that in life there are two primary mind-sets: closed and open. You are always in one or the other. When you slip into a closed mindset, you close off possibilities. Possibilities to learn for communication, for connection and for abundance! The closed mindset is full of judgment, fear, arrogance, assumption and limitation.
It hampers your quality of life. When you choose the open mindset, you immediately have access to new opportunities: (Madhuku intelligently quotes J. Meyer)
2.18. In the end it’s not the size of the project that determines its acceptance, support and success-it’s the size of the leader (Madhuku intelligently quotes J. Maxwell) He adds, ‘Of course this does not mean we shouldn’t interrogate and evaluate the curriculum review process — no, not at all.’ Read on:
3.4 Yes colleagues, we should be proud of our work and celebrate our sterling performance because it’s us who make things happen. Good or excellent results at any school are evidently a clear sign of competent and effective leadership capable of team work and motivating teachers to work hard with little or no supervision at all.
3.5. So I am taking this chance to thank you all, for I don’t remember anybody thanking us. We could be forgotten! Like I always say, ‘of all the virtues, gratitude is probably the most neglected and least expressed.’
3.6 We will continue singing on top of our voices, our success stories on our own, for as one African proverb correctly puts it, “Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that is Mr Johnson Madhuku for you.
3.7 When the pressure is on, great leaders are at their best. Whatever is inside them comes to surface…Amen Mr Madhuku!
Yes, that is Mr Johnson Madhuku for you! Love him, hate him, fear him! He has a job to do. And in the eyes of this reporter, a former teacher and currently independent education consultant and analyst himself, here is a NASH president who not only loves his job, but certainly does it with passion, courage, calculation, intelligence and remarkable leadership qualities.
His NASH-Kariba address, like many others in the past, reminds me of Mark Antony’s graveside speech when his best friend (Caesar) had been assassinated by people he was not sure of… people he did not trust: “Friends, Romans, countrymen; I come to bury Caesar, but not to praise him…” Case closed.
