Police arrest 21 Students during countrywide demonstrations

By Lance Guma
16 February 2006

Police arrested twenty-one students from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo during countrywide demonstrations on Wednesday. The students are protesting against the shocking tuition fee hikes and what they consider to be government neglect of their welfare in a hyper-inflationary environment. The protests spread to the University of Zimbabwe and the Bulawayo Polytechnic on Thursday. Both NUST and the Bulawayo Polytechnic have since been closed as a result. These demonstrations come in the same week that at least 300 WOZA women were arrested during Valentines Day marches across the country.

At NUST, students clashed with riot police and several windows and vehicles were smashed during the skirmishes. University of Zimbabwe students at the Medical School are not attending lectures and those attached to wards in the hospitals are refusing to attend to patients. University authorities postponed the opening of the campus after students’ threats to demonstrate on the first day of term. The Medical school however was already open and students there seized the opportunity to show their disgruntlement. According to Mfundo Mlilo the Secretary General of the UZ Students Executive Council, they addressed a gathering of 4th year students from the medical faculty who then marched around Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare before riot police broke up the demonstration.

On Wednesday, student leaders met the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Higher Education to discuss the exorbitant fee increases. They were told the government was cash strapped and could not review the fees. Although they got assurances no student will be barred from the university for failing to pay their fees, it remains to be seen if the gesture is not just mere politicking to avoid the ongoing unrest. Mlilo accused the government of trying to commercialise education and said they need a proper education policy that was enshrined in the constitution. At present government can decide whether to support students or not, given that they are not legally bound by the law to do so.