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Deliver us from surrogacy
Fortune Chamba, Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
January 11, 2008

Apart from a broader mandate to defend democracy, the rule of law and all human and fundamental freedoms, history has bequeathed a legacy giving the students movement the responsibility to determine their own destiny by defending, promoting and jealously protecting their academic freedoms. The student's movement in Zimbabwe faces an education system negating the attainment of quality education, violating instead students' rights.

As the 2008 harmonized Presidential and Parliamentary elections approach, government has not undertaken to remedy statutory and institutional mechanisms slowing the full realization of academic freedoms. The University of Zimbabwe Act, providing the framework for higher learning institutions gives Vice Chancellors the discretion to expel, suspend, and prohibit any individual from a multitude of entitlements. Section8 (3) of the Act, spelling out the VCs powers, is tyrannically Nazi in form, content and effect, subordinating the justiciability of disciplinary proceedings to the VC. This is a deliberate attempt to strangle the movements radical political culture in executing the mandate stated above.

Members of the student's movement should realize that the history of struggle driving their agenda for many generations cannot be left to a specific group of individuals, but is everyone's birthright. This legacy can be reclaimed democratically by voting for a leadership undertaking to restore our academic freedoms and improve the quality of our education system. The intention is not to hold our nation at ransom but to raise awareness as to the plight of students in Zimbabwe. With a student dropout rate estimated at 31%, and the government reneging from its obligation to cushion economically marginalized students from exorbitant tuition, accommodation and catering fees, the situation cannot be over emphasized.

The students' movement has never been known to bootlick political formations since this berates its role in the broad processes of democratization. Sharing sympathies and interests is an exception to this rule, but the flirtation by the Zimbabwe Congress of Students union (ZICOSU) with ZANU PF revolts against reason. Rebutting the presumption that ZICOSU is an extension of the ZANU PF Youth Assembly is difficult given its solidarity with a political formation housing its delegates in halls of residence declared 'uninhabitable' for students at UZ. They attend a banquet disguised as a Congress - when students hungrily walk long distances to and from campus - endorsing a candidate lacking sympathy with students eating swill in campus dinning halls countrywide.

The movement is tasked to denounce "yellow dog" unions meant only to rubber stamp prejudicial government policies. The movement should stand firm for a cause setting it apart from the dynamics of national political formations. This cause gives the movement a perpetual image of "struggle", its inalienable birthright. Our relevance in the broader democratization process lies in concentrating on and advancing an agenda that is peculiar to our interests unless we are comfortable with the surrogacy tag like ZICOSU.

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