ZINASU on International Workers Day

The Zimbabwe National Students union (ZINASU) joins the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the world and millions of workers across the globe in the full name of active solidarity in commemorating the Anniversary of the International Workers Day. On this day, the students will join the working class people in Zimbabwe whose daily life is a torture base of hunger, unbearable toil and anxiety for a survival at the hands of an irresponsible government. 

Amidst all this crisis facing the working class people in Zimbabwe and the world over`, ZINASU celebrate and salute the strength and resilient fighting spirit of the working class people of Zimbabwe and the ZCTU, our parents and brothers and sisters who toil daily under a paltry salary of US$150 and those whose daily cry for employment is given a deaf ear. 

On this historic May Day, the students of Zimbabwe will throng the venue to join their parents, brothers and sisters in a true revolutionary mood blended by class-consciousness, the determination to reinvigorate the people’s struggle for the political, social and economic transformation of Zimbabwe that will usher in a free prospect of class growth of the waged people and its open struggle for self determination. 

The May Day celebrations of 2010 takes place at a time when the students are mourning the demise of the once vibrant education system in the country. The students in Zimbabwe continue to face multifaceted serious challenges that manifests in astronomical and restrictive tuition fees, brutality against students activists incessant closure of halls of residence by the UZ authorities, the arbitrary suspensions and expulsion of students’ leaders and the general deterioration of the state of the whole sector. 

The celebrations are also taking place at a time when the majority of the students at the University of Zimbabwe have been endangered of their future by being barred to sit for their end of semester examinations by the brutal and ruthless policies of the notorious Vice Chancellor Levy Nyagura. 

The celebrations also come in the work of a stage-managed but doomed parliamentary driven process of constitutional reform which has undermined the students and workers’ call for a genuine people driven constitution reform process that underpins fundamental human rights, particularly workers’ rights for decent living conditions and a living salary. ZINASU will reject any outcome of this default process as it cannot be trusted as a guarantor of the right to education and improved working conditions. 

In this regard, ZINASU wishes to reaffirm that the workers struggle for decent working conditions and salaries and the students’ struggles for decent free education are inseparable hence students shall actively and meaningfully participate in all workers’ processes in defending resolution 5 of the historic 7th ZINASU Bi-Annual Congress which call upon, ‘Government and private sector employers to immediately review upwards the salaries of the workers in the private and public sector in line with economic improvements and the poverty datum line.’ 

ZINASU urges the government of Zimbabwe to heed to the call of the suffering workers and take drastic and appropriate measures to address the plight of the waged class. 

Shinga Mushandi Shinga, Shinga Mudzidzi Shinga, Shinga Murombo Shinga 

In defense of Academic Freedoms in Zimbabwe 

Comradely 

Tafadzwa ‘Tuboy’ Mugwadi, ZINASU National President

[newsletter]