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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Strikes and Protests 2007/8 - Students
Students
continue Bulawayo demonstrations
Students Solidarity Trust
February 01, 2007
Following student
protests in Bulawayo on the 17th of January 2007, which saw the
arrest of the ZINASU
President, Promise Mkwananzi and 9 other student activists, students
at the institutions of higher learning in Bulawayo took to the streets
again on the 1st of February 2007 and have continued to engage the
government through street protests after failing to get an ear on
the negotiating table. Student leaders from the National
University of Science and Technology, NUST, have made pilgrimage
to Harare, twice in January alone seeking audience with the Permanent
Secretary in the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Mr.
Mbizvo, but without any success.
The police arrested
20 students after dispersing protestors, who included, Augustine
Mate of the Hillside Teachers College Students Representative Council,
Prince Dove, Admire Zaya, Mpilo Dube and Polite Makaza, together
with about 20 other non-students who were caught in the indiscriminate
and arbitrary web of police arrests. The students are demanding
the abolition of the fee structure that was imposed by the government
last year, and a return to the grant system. The fee structure,
whose figures were revised upwards at the beginning of the year,
now demands about ˝ a Million dollars, ZW$500,000 or USD$ 2000.00
as fees from students, a figure that is way beyond the reach of
most Zimbabweans, who can barely get by on meager salaries that
are eroded by inflation before they are logged with the banks.
The students
mother body, ZINASU, has already categorically stated that they
have located their struggles within the SAVE Zimbabwe campaign –
a campaign that involves all pro-democracy movements. To that the
end the protesting were also protesting on the following issues:
-
- No life
Presidency disguised as harmonization of elections
- An end to
water cuts
- An end to
electricity cuts
- Living wages
for teachers, and all civil servants especially those currently
on strike.
The Students
Solidarity Trust contends that the continued systematic harassment
of student activists making a legitimate and just claim for their
democratic rights is a feeble attempt by a cornered regime to stifle
free discourse, which is aimed at expressing discontent against
the failing regime. It is such type of recalcitrant behavior by
the state security apparatus that has soiled the image of the country
that Harare would so much want to repair.
Visit the Students
Solidarity Trust fact
sheet
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