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Student leaders arrested
Students Solidarity Trust (SST)
January 17, 2007

Zimbabwe's state security agents are on a warpath! The stifling of academic freedoms and free discourse on the institutions of higher learning continue unchecked.

At a time when the education sector is on a free fall, police in Bulawayo have arrested 10 student leaders, among them Promise Mkwananzi, the Zinasu President, Beloved Chiweshe the Secretary General, Melward Makwenjere, Legal Affairs Secretary, Zwelithini Viki, Emmanuel Nyoni (Pres.UCE),Jonathan Magabathela (finance secretary NUST), Tafadzwa Chengewa (President,Hillside Teachers College), Gladys Mukubvu ( Finance Secretary Bulawayo Poly).

The student leaders have been taken to Matopos Police Station, a remote part of Matebeleland South (also serves as a tourist attraction) 40km outside Bulawayo.

ZINASU is on a nationwide campaign aimed at redressing the rot that has infiltrated the education sector and which has threatened to make education inaccessible in Zimbabweans.

The state has continued to raise fees arbitrarily, and a research carried out by the Students Solidarity Trust in Bulawayo revealed that owing to the excessive tuition fees which students cannot afford, colleges like Bulawayo Poly and UCE have an average of 5 students per class. At Bulawayo, many dining halls have closed because students can hardly afford the full fees which include accommodation ( it comes to a staggering $350 000). At the same college, 2 out of 15 hostels are fully functional.

This is the rot which the ZINASU leadership is seeking to fight.

Yet they have continued to make do with a flurry of arrests meant to cow them into submission

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