The problem with today’s article is that the two seniormost people in the Ministry of Education and Training are my good people.
I have known them for years and, admittedly, have a very good relationship with them.
I love Owen Nxumalo’s charisma and cannot help but find the nickname given to him by teachers — ‘Handsome’ — such a fitting one. Each time I see him smile, the minister gives off a good vibe. There is something to admire in the principal secretary too, whom I have known for a long time, since her days in the world of beauty pageants (yes, those who know, they know!).
These two people are watching as the ministry achieves something remarkable — it has managed to preside over a system in freefall while remaining entirely preoccupied with itself.
Its leadership, consumed by internal feuding, has left an entire generation of pupils to absorb the consequences.
The evidence is found in a constellation of scandals so vast it is no longer possible to ignore.
Let us begin with the leadership.
The treatment of former principal secretary Bheki Gama signalled how this ministry operates. Reports from 2024 and 2025 detail a toxic power struggle between Gama and then-undersecretary Naniki Mnisi, fracturing the ministry into warring factions for months — if not years.
Insiders described the atmosphere as a nightmare, while the Public Accounts Committee could only despair when the matter came before it.
Naniki called it out in Parliament — kutsi akusebenteki — confirming what had become an open secret within the six-storey building.
When top officials cannot collaborate without descending into acrimony, they cannot credibly oversee schools. A ministry so busy fighting itself has forgotten it has a country to serve.
It is no surprise, then, that this internal warfare has bled directly into the botched rollout of the Competency-Based Education (CBE) curriculum for Grade 8.
Reform, in principle, is noble. Systems worldwide are shifting from rote memorisation towards critical thinking. But in this country, reform has become a euphemism for improvisation.
Teachers’ unions, including the Swaziland National Association of Teachers, have warned that schools are being set up to fail.
Many have reverted to old syllabuses due to inadequate training and missing resources. Educators are pushed through haphazard workshops rather than properly prepared.
Announcing teacher training in the middle of an academic year is to admit — publicly and without self-awareness — that preparation never happened.
It is the educational equivalent of a surgeon enrolling in an anatomy class mid-operation.
Government appeals for patience ring hollow. Our children are paying the price with disrupted learning and uncertain futures.
Thousands of contract teachers endure precarious employment, renewed in exhausting cycles.
The minister has occasionally intervened — ordering reinstatements and vowing to end contract employment by 2030 — but these are patchwork fixes to a systemic wound.
In approximately 20 years, the first cohort of educators who have spent 15 or more years on rolling contracts will reach retirement without civil service pensions, without consistent provident fund contributions and without accumulated employment benefits.
When they retire into poverty, Eswatini will have no honest answer.
A country that extracts decades of service from educators while withholding permanent employment is writing a humanitarian debt it has no plan to repay.
The ministry’s posture toward the Eswatini Medical Christian University (EMCU) is perhaps most damning.
Meant to address critical healthcare shortages, the university now appears to be imploding.
There are serious allegations of unchecked power, controversial council decisions and questionable oversight. The ministry’s name features prominently — yet its oversight role appears either complicit or neglected.
When a ministry claps its hands at the destruction of a tertiary institution, it is not merely negligent — it is complicit.
By refusing to hold the EMCU board accountable, it signals that hierarchy shields individuals from consequence.
What is required now is candour and urgency.
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Halt further CBE rollout until full teacher training and resources are in place.
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Begin structured absorption of contract teachers into permanent employment immediately.
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Parliament must restore credibility to the EMCU probe.
Our children are not a pilot programme.
They deserve a ministry that guards their futures with the same ferocity it uses to protect its own.
This institutional paralysis is no longer merely embarrassing — it is dangerous.
As for those at the National Curriculum Centre — shame on you.
But, ngiyabuya kini.
