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State of the student movement in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
June 13, 2007

Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) held an extra-ordinary General Council meeting on Saturday the 9th of June 2007.The meeting was attended by Student Representative Presidents of more than 40 Colleges and Universities who discussed issues facing students in various institutions of higher learning. Issue identification has become a new center of force in politics.

The major problems facing students in Zimbabwe include the issue of bonding of students to government for three years after completing their studies. This is grossly unfair and unacceptable. Over the years the government was sponsoring students and yet they never thought of bonding students. It is only now when the government has failed to fund students that they now try to implement this futile strategy. The students refuse to be bonded to a desperate government whose only primordial instinct is to guarantee itself cheap labour and misappropriate state resources with military discipline and brutal efficiency. If this country is not a military state, ZINASU questions the rationale behind bonding students to a non-existent contract.

The students condemn the deplorable diet that most colleges are offering, usually cabbage with no cooking oil and students are required to bring their own sugar and salt. ZINASU condemns the deplorable diets which are being served in colleges which have become a recipe for diarrhea. Further, the colleges are now asking for a top up (between $700 000 and $800 000) outside the gazetted amount. And yet the students on teaching practice are being paid $66 000, a figure far less than the amount they need for transport alone which is estimated at $200 000 per month. The University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) Department of Education is demanding $250 000 as Teaching Practice Levy and $1.2 million for the development of the project. The majority of our students are living under chronic and abject poverty to afford such enormous amounts. It is unfortunate that under an African Black government, African Black students, who are backbone of this country, can be reduced into such objects of ridicule.

The incessant water and power cuts, coupled with broken down toilet cisterns have turned our institutions of higher learning into both laughing storks and health hazards .The students can hardly bath, read or use the toilets .The environment has just become an aberration of a conducive learning environment. All toilets at Mkoba Teachers College are not working; there is no internet for students at Bondolfi Teachers' College, Chinhoyi University of Technology, which the government claims to be the epitome of technology has only thirteen working computers .As a result, students writing examinations are forced to wait up to 12 midnight for their turn to access a computer. At Mary Mount Teachers' College, the students are being forced to pay computer levy when they have never used a computer. It remains a mystery as to where Mrs. Matongo (the Principal of Mary Mount) is taking the money to. Midlands State University is running with on empty water taps. Electricity blackouts are affecting the functioning of boreholes. Students at Gwebu Agricultural College and Mupfure College have gone for month without eating beef despite the fact that they have farms with plenty of cattle.

The University of Zimbabwe has resorted to buying satellite toilets because normal toilets have broken down and have not been refurbished, Professor Levy Nyagura, the UZ Chancellor will go down the annals of history as having expelled more student leaders and activists in an independent Zimbabwe than anyone else. Bindura University students of police studies behave like an organized militia who harass and intimidate other students. This is in spite of strict laws that prohibit fighting among students .lt is astonishing how these militia elements have not been expelled after physically assaulting students who are suspected to be protagonists of academic freedoms.

Professor Obert Maravanyika, the Vice Chancellor of Masvingo State University who behaves like a 16th century Dictator was implicated in a corruption dossier leaked from his university. There was no investigation carried out .One English Lecturer is reported to demand sex from female students in order to make them pass .Because of wrangle over the name of Masvingo State University, to date no student has graduated from that university. The Chancellor of all state institutions in Zimbabwe, Mr. Robert Mugabe has allegedly refused to cap the students until the name of the institution is changed to Great Zimbabwe University, a name associated with one of the most spectacular failures of the government after the collapse of another Great Zimbabwe University which was being run by Dr. Matarire, a niece of the late Dr. Simon Vengesayi Muzenda .Dr Matarire had usurped the university from the Reformed Church in Zimbabwe, with the ostensible support of government, particularly the former Resident Minister and Governor of Masvingo Mr. Josiah Hungwe.

At Masvingo Polytechnic, Engineering students were forced to go and help construct houses under the government scheme dubbed Operation Garikai from July to December 2006.The government paid no cent for the services rendered by these student .Instead, they said student are now being required pay the enormous sums like everyone else. Further, the students have been put on a crush program to finish their program and go .It is unthinkable and unimaginable that a Black government can be so cruel to its own children, 27 years after independence .In this modern day time, such a philosophy is worse than slavery and colonialism.

Way forward

In accordance with the resolution of the General Council, the students are urged to DEFY the top up call from government. It is outside the gazetted amount unaffordable. The students were never even consulted and the notice was too short for students who are currently traumatized by hunger and poverty. The food being served is not commensurate with the huge monies that the government is demanding. The students are being given sadza with cabbage without cooking oil and tomatoes. They are being asked to bring their own salt.

The union demands an immediate meeting with Ministry of higher and tertiary education to find an amicable solution to the crisis. ZINASU would like to take this opportunity to warn the government that failure to find a solution to these problems will only bring more animosity between the student and the government and this will not help the situation.

Visit the ZINASU fact sheet

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