Reinstated student vows to fight draconian powers

The University of Zimbabwe has readmitted two student leaders suspended two years ago on the basis of draconian regulations that students say they will continue to challenge.

Zimbabwe National Students Union or ZINASU Secretary-General Makomborero Haruzivishe and the union’s Harare Provincial Secretary for Gender Affairs Takudzwa Dzumbunu were recently informed that they may return to campus to resume their studies. Haruzivishe received a letter dated 16 March announcing the lifting of the suspension.

He and Dzumbunu were barred by university authorities from pursuing their studies at the university for two years despite being cleared by the country’s courts of any wrongdoing, after they were arrested in 2014 for addressing students at the Harare Polytechnic College.

Haruzivishe said he had tried to appeal against both the university’s conviction and sentence but the administration had instead fined him US$100 and forced him to apologise.

“Despite their failure to substantiate their trumped-up charges against us for peacefully and lawfully demanding our right to education and the present fact that a higher court [Harare Rotten Row Magistrates Court] had acquitted us of the very same charges, I was unfairly convicted and harshly sentenced by the University of Zimbabwe disciplinary council,” he said.

Stronger resolve

Haruzivishe, a psychology honours student, said the experience had strengthened his resolve to fight for the reform of the draconian Ordinance 30 which was used to oust him.

“I will mobilise fellow students to demand its [the rule’s] alignment to the Zimbabwean constitution, for it is upon these rules that students are denied academic freedoms and persecuted by university administrations,” he said.

According to Haruzivishe, Ordinance 30 of 1984 empowers vice-chancellors and university administrators to make rules, laws and policies to govern students. Its disciplinary aspects are abused in Zimbabwe to clamp down on student leaders and activists who speak out against injustices on campus, he believes.

He said ZINASU has engaged Zimbabwe’s Higher Education parliamentary portfolio committee in an attempt to scrap the rule.

“The Zimbabwe National Students Union is also currently scrutinising Ordinance 30 [in relation to] the national constitution so as to identify the unconstitutional aspects for either reforming or repealing. We will then engage the ministry and the courts to ensure these reforms are done, implemented and effected this academic year,” he said.

Last year, the University of Zimbabwe used the same Ordinance 30 to 'discipline' and withdraw the certificates of three students who held aloft protest placards demanding jobs during their graduation at a ceremony at which Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was officiating.

Tools of oppression

A prominent Zimbabwean lawyer, Alex Magaisa, currently based at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, wrote in a blog post titled, “How Mugabe strangled the Zimbabwean student movement (Part 2)”, that the ordinance formed part of an array of tools used by the government to control students and keep them in check.

“This became a potent tool against students, who were required to sign an undertaking upon registration that they would observe Ordinance 30 during their tenure at the university. The Student Disciplinary Committee and officers authorised under Ordinance 30 had investigatory and disciplinary powers, including penalising students found guilty of misconduct,” he wrote.

“As most students came from poor backgrounds, the threat of suspension and expulsion under Ordinance 30 always hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles. This cocktail bred passive behaviour among many students, exactly as intended by the government,” he wrote.

Magaisa said the situation became worse in the post-2000 period with student leaders being expelled and banished from the university. Many were rescued by scholarships which took them to countries like South Africa and the Netherlands in order to complete their studies.

“Needless to say, these extreme penalties increased the levels of fear among students that came after them,” he said.