The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) joins the world and millions of students across the globe in the full name of active solidarity in celebrating the Anniversary of the Day of the African Child.
This is the day when black students in South Africa stood up to guard against their identity in the face of a repressive apartheid regime whose rule deprived indigenous people their free and quality education.
Racial legislations such as the Afrikaans Decree of 1974 which imposed Afrikaans and English as mediums of instruction in African Bantu schools created under the unpopular Bantu Education Act of 1953 were ruthlessly enforced against a wave of black power and death of the throes of colonialism that was obtaining in the whole of Africa.
Resistance by students from high schools in Soweto created tension with the government which sort a decline in the use of English culminating into the popular uprising that came to be known as ‘The Soweto Massacre’ in 1976. Several students were callously massacred resulting in the death of vibrant African young men and women.
ZINASU therefore appreciates the effort that was exhibited by the students in fighting against oppression to preserve and defend African values. It is sad however to note that at the time we are commemorating this historic day, oppression by African government still exist where our freedoms as students are trampled upon.
African countries still find themselves mired in deep polarisation as a result of dictatorship and bad governance. The values and efforts exhibited by Soweto students of free education and general student freedoms have just been ignored and this is evidenced by several cases of student victimisation at tertiary institutions through charging exorbitant fees, illegal suspensions and arbitrary arrests of students.
It is against this state of the education sector that ZINASU calls upon the government to give priority to the students of Zimbabwe and the youth in general. The high unemployment levels obtaining in the country as a result of poor policies and bad governance is a serious challenge that needs serious action from the government and avoid our country from degenerating into a hub of poverty inspite of the intellectual property that we possess.
Commoditization of the education sector through charging exorbitant fees beyond the reach of the majority especially in the face of the current economic challenges bedeviling our country is a characteristic of a rudimentary economy brought about by government failure.
The criteria being used by tertiary institutions to select parallel and conventional students should be very clear. The idea of parallel students should target students at the workplace who are the actual recipients of that process to stop abuse of the process that is currently taking place at state universities.
As the National students body we continue to demand our grants and loans and the scrapping off of the cadetship scheme which has proved to be a dismal failure because of its inability to serve all students. Hundreds of students from several institutions have also had their transcripts withheld until the government pay up cadetship arrears.
We call upon the government to come up with a sustainable solution to this challenge through giving a directive to institutions barring this injudicious behaviour. The government must focus on establishing a revolving fund to improve access to education in line with the constitution of the land.
Our female students as a result of the economic crisis have faced gross challenges especially the access to education as well as their living standards at different campuses. Their life has been by made hard by the fact that most of our students are sons and daughters of peasant farmers and civil servants which the government has neglected over the years. The result of this economic quagmire has manifested itself in anti-social behaviours like prostitution among others.
ZINASU-MDC Relationship.
In response to a statement that was issued last week alleging that our organisation is aligned to MDC renewal, we wish to set the record straight that as ZINASU we are driven by our founding values of non-partisanship in the fight for academic freedoms of all students regardless of political affiliations.
We are an autonomous organisation that seeks to bring sanity within the education sector and never at an point will we be dragged into the politics of the MDC nor any other political party. Members of ZINASU are free to support political parties of their choice as citizens of Zimbabwe and in accordance with the constitution of the land however as an organisation our founding values of non-partisanship continue to reign supreme in pursuit of our objectives.
We regret the public confusion that has been made by the statement wherein the biggest student movement has been portrayed as an extension of a political party. Our thrust as an organisation is to see a nation defined by academic freedoms and national economic development and we do that with a great measure of non-partisanship inorder to realize true representation of our constituency.
Finally we want to warn the government that education is a right not a privilege and we are prepared to use any means necessary to realize its accessibility. The fight for the right to education is a generational mandate and we will never pay attention to any machinations that seek to derail us in that respect.
Avoid Masiraha- ZINASU National Spokesperson.
