08/02/2026
EDUCATED IN TO POVERTY"
By a Qualified but Unemployed Teacher
In Eswatini, education is sold to the poor as a lifeline. It is preached as the only clean road out of suffering, the one path that crime, desperation, and dependency do not contaminate. For those of us who grew up with nothing, education was not a choice—it was survival. It was the promise we clung to when everything else failed.
Today, that promise feels like a betrayal.
I am a qualified teacher. I did what the country asked of me. I studied. I endured. I sacrificed. I stayed disciplined when shortcuts tempted me. Yet years after qualifying, I remain unemployed, watching my life stall while time moves relentlessly forward.
I grew up an orphan. I did not inherit stability or protection. I was passed from one household to another, learning early that being poor means learning silence, gratitude, and endurance. Education became my anchor. It was the one thing no one could take from me—so I was told.
The government assisted with part of my school fees, and I acknowledge that support. But the reality behind that assistance was brutal. Fees were often incomplete. I depended on last-minute top-ups, borrowed money, and the mercy of others just to stay enrolled. Hunger and anxiety were familiar companions. Still, I stayed in school, believing the sacrifice had meaning.
An educator once told me, “Get educated. One day, education will set you free.”Those words shaped my entire life. I repeated them to myself during nights of doubt. I repeated them when I felt invisible. I repeated them when giving up would have been easier.
But there is a part of this story we rarely tell.
When you are poor and unemployed, you are constantly negotiating with temptation. Crime is not attractive—it is loud, obvious, and final. I have held myself back not because hunger disappears, but because fingerprints do not disappear. One arrest, one record, one mistake—and government policy permanently disqualifies you from public employment. I stayed clean, not because life was kind, but because I feared destroying the only future I was promised.
That self-control comes at a cost. You watch opportunities vanish while you protect a system that does not protect you back.
I also carry another burden: motivation. I am expected to inspire my younger siblings and those who look up to me. They ask, *“Does education really work?”* I want to tell them yes. I want to be proof. Instead, I am a warning they quietly study.
How do you motivate a child to study when your own qualifications cannot feed you? How do you preach patience when hunger is immediate? How do you tell them not to give up when you are barely holding on yourself?
Corruption has turned these conversations into acts of emotional dishonesty. We are forced to sell hope we ourselves can no longer afford.
This crisis is not limited to teachers. It spills into every corner of life. I am at an age where it is my turn to look after the elderly who once carried me. Parents and guardians who sacrificed their strength so I could study now depend on me. But I have nothing to give. The shame of that failure is crushing—not because I am lazy, but because corruption has blocked every honest door.
In my world, food is no longer about nutrition or health. A meal is a luxury. Sometimes the only requirement is that it fills the stomach. Choice disappears when survival takes over. Planning disappears. Dignity erodes quietly.
We are not sitting at home doing nothing. That narrative is convenient and cruel. Many of us work in foreign-owned enterprises, especially Asian-owned businesses, where desperation is exploited. We are treated like property—worked hard, paid little, and reminded daily that we are replaceable. We generate wealth we will never taste. We leave exhausted, humiliated, and still poor.
This is not employment. It is controlled survival.
Meanwhile, corruption intensifies. It no longer only blocks jobs—it destroys families, humiliates the elderly, demoralizes the youth, and turns education into a gamble instead of a guarantee. The damage is generational.
The pain of this reality is difficult to put into words. As I write this, tears sit heavy behind my eyes. Not because I am weak, but because I am tired of being strong in silence.
Education did not fail me. I honored my side of the social contract. I stayed disciplined. I avoided crime. I qualified. The system failed me by rewarding corruption and punishing honesty.
Eswatini cannot continue educating its children into poverty. It cannot ask the poor to believe in education while corruption eats the rewards. It cannot demand patience from people who are starving with certificates in their hands.
I am still here. Still qualified. Still trying. Still clean. Still hoping—carefully.
But hope, like hunger, has limits.
If education is truly the key, then corruption is the lock—and right now, it is firmly shut.
A FINAL APPEAL: LEADERSHIP, ACCOUNTABILITY AND HOPE
Despite everything, I remain hopeful about this country. That hope rests in the belief that decisive, principled leadership can still correct what corruption has distorted.
I strongly believe that meaningful change is possible if the highest office takes an uncompromising stand against corruption—publicly, consistently, and lawfully. Corrupt individuals have milked the state to the point where ministries claim there is no money to hire the very public servants the nation desperately needs. This is not a capacity problem; it is a governance problem.
Today, corruption has grown so confident that even the courts are widely perceived to be compromised. Hospitals run out of essential medicines while budgets disappear. People suffer and die not because solutions do not exist, but because accountability is absent. This is not merely mismanagement—it is a moral crisis.
In Eswatini, authority still carries weight. When leadership speaks with clarity and resolve, it matters. If corruption is confronted decisively—through dismissals, prosecutions, recovery of stolen funds, and permanent removal from public office—fear will return to where it belongs: not among the poor, but among those who abuse power.
Beyond punishment, reform must be practical. Close procurement loopholes. Audit ministries transparently. Cut unnecessary costs. Enforce merit-based hiring. Protect whistleblowers. Align budgets with national needs—education, healthcare, and employment—rather than patronage. These are not radical ideas; they are overdue ones.
If such action is taken, normalcy can return. Teachers can teach. Nurses can nurse. Hospitals can heal. Young people can believe again that discipline and education are worth the sacrifice.
I am still positive about this country. Not because the pain is small, but because the potential is great. Eswatini does not lack talent, values, or willingness to work. What it lacks—urgently—is accountability.
If leadership acts, the nation can recover. If corruption is confronted at the top, hope will rise at the bottom.
That is my appeal. And it is made not in anger, but in faith that Eswatini can still choose justice over decay.
Times of Eswatini
Eswatini Observer
The SNAT Platform
Ministry of Education and Training Eswatini
Swaziland News
Swaziland Democratic News
Eswatini Government
