David Coltart

David Coltart (born 4 October 1957) is a Zimbabwean lawyer, Christian leader and politician. He was a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change when it was established in 1999 and its founding secretary for legal affairs. Coltart was the Member of Parliament for Bulawayo South in the House of Assembly from 2000 to 2008, and he was elected to the Senate in 2008. He was the Minister for Education, Sport, Arts and Culture from February 2009 until August 2013. Quotes The most corrupt are those who speak against corruption. It is a monumental defeat for the government. With the amount of violence that has gone on, with the total denial of access to the media, with the fact that we have not had an opportunity to look at the voter rolls yet, there is just no way that a free and fair election can be held. He's been trying to create the conditions necessary for a state of emergency because that's the only way he can postpone this election. This is either a snub to Mbeki or an indication South Africa is complicit. If that is the case they will be faced with a constitutional problem. Their actions will be meaningless in terms of Section 41 (1)(e) of the constitution which requires that the party informs the Leader of the House that a sitting MP is no longer their member. My case is different because of the type of electorate in my constituency. They have been supportive all along. There are a couple of improvements; obviously firstly the improvement that the transitional government has made in terms of paying teachers with money they can use, with money that doesn't lose its value. That's nothing to do with me, that's part of the Minister of Finance's work and the transitional government's work in general. But secondly what I've done is I've waived the requirement that teachers pay fees at government schools - that was a small perk for teachers. Thirdly I've tried to streamline the procedures involved in getting teachers back to work. There was a very cumbersome process that teachers had to go through if they wanted to come back to work. I think that the fundamental policy is that we all as Zimbabweans desire our children to be taught by the best qualified people and the one very satisfying thing about the recent survey done by my advisory board is that we still have a very high percentage of teachers who are fully qualified and I'd rather not get too bogged down on Border Gezi people, I would rather focus on this goal of ensuring that we aim towards achieving a goal of having 100 percent of our teachers fully qualified, 100 percent of our teachers having gone through tertiary institutions, our teacher training colleges so they are genuine teachers. External links Category:Lawyers from Zimbabwe Category:Politicians from Zimbabwe Category:Government ministers Category:1957 births Category:Living people