Features

Zimbabwean students fight for their right to education

By Paul Garbett
Published: 11/10/2009

September saw thousands of students jamming phone lines, worried that their student loan wouldn’t arrive in time for the start of term, sparking a national outcry and calls for our student finance system to be overhauled

Yet over 5,000 miles away in troubled Zimbabwe, the financial problems faced by British students are put into a much wider perspective.

While the University of Sheffield’s first year population were worrying if their student loan would stretch to fund a week of freshers week fun, students in Zimbabwe struggle to access clean drinking water.

The last academic year in Zimbabwe was in effect cancelled, with a lack of lecturers to teach students and rapid inflation making it near impossible for students to pay rising tuition fees. And those who are brave enough to speak out against the lack of higher education infrastructure face the risk of arrest or torture.

The current education situation demonstrates yet another area of sad decline in a country once known as "the breadbasket of Africa", but where millions of people are now starving.

For many years Zimbabwe’s education system was held up as a shining example of an African success story, with the immaculate grounds of the University of Zimbabwe being the envy of many other African countries.

In 1984 Edinburgh University awarded President Robert Mugabe an honorary degree for his services to education. Yet in 2007, Edinburgh took the unprecedented step of revoking Mugabe’s degree, a testament to the downward spiral Zimbabwe’s education system has experienced over recent years.

Today, the once envied teaching facilities at the University of Zimbabwe lie in tatters with buildings crumbling and falling down.

The university opened its doors to students eight months late this year, with no clean water available until UNICEF drilled 13 water boreholes on campus. "The situation is very fragile" says Mark Deacon from Action for Southern Africa, a charity which is campaigning for Zimbabwean students.

"When students have tried standing up for their rights, quite often they are being received by a hostile police force who have randomly arrested student leaders", he said.

Economic conditions for the average Zimbabwean remain dire. The dollarization of the Zimbabwean economy, introduced in January 2009 as an attempt to kick-start the financial system, has meant that many students cannot afford fees.

Inflation reached 281million per cent last year and the Zimbabwean Dollar is practically worthless, leaving students to scrape together US Dollars in a bid to pay higher education fees.

Humanities students’ fees now amount to US$404 a year: wildly out of reach in a country where over half the population live on less than US$1 per day.

With universities struggling to maintain staff levels due a mass exodus of lecturers to neighbouring countries, Zimbabwe’s National Union of Students declared 2008 "a non academic year as no meaningful learning took place".

The arrest of student leaders for arranging protests and meetings have also prompted concerns for personal safety.

The Zimbabwe National Students Union claims that its members have been the victims of violence and torture, because they have spoken out against Mugabe’s government and its lack of provision for education.

In August, four students were beaten and arrested while attending a meeting on university issues. Thanks to international outcry, they were released after two nights in prison, but still face charges under the Criminal Law Act for "participating in a gathering with intent to promote public violence, breach of peace or bigotry".

But while young people in Zimbabwe struggle to gain a degree, students from wealthier backgrounds are escaping the country to attend foreign universities.

Robert Mugabe’s own daughter attends the University of Hong Kong, far away from the inadequate higher education system headed by her father.

Only time will tell whether the new political agreement will help the students of Zimbabwe, but with an academic system in crisis and the situation becoming increasingly desperate, the decline of this once proud educational nation will consider for sometime.

Leaving a generation of talented young people to miss out on further education and an opportunity that so many of us take for granted.

Rate this article