ZIMBABWE: 'Draconian' new higher education law

A new law governing higher education institutions in Zimbabwe, soon to become operational, has been dismissed by critics as draconian. Minister for Higher and Tertiary Education Stan Mudenge announced that the government was in the process of appointing a nine-member board that will exert control over institutions under the legislation - the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education Act.

Mudenge said the act had been promulgated to register and accredit institutions of higher education and to regulate quality assurance in them. The new law replaces the National Council for Higher Education Act.

Although the latest act was promulgated in late 2006, it will only come into effect with the appointment of a Council for Higher Education board, all of whose members are chosen by the minister.

Prominent Harare lawyer and a lecturer in the public law department at the University of Zimbabwe, Douglas Mwonzora, slammed the move: "This is an attempt by the Zanu-PF government to politicise education. They are bringing the Border Gezi situation into mainstream education. Ideally higher education must be run by independent academics and experts," Mwonzora said.

Border Gezi was a Youth Minister and the ruling party's national commissar whose name was given to a notorious vocational training centre where youths are 're-educated' to support President Robert Mugabe's rule. Many of its graduates are alleged to have participated in youth brigades that have harassed and assaulted supporters of the political opposition.

Mugabe declared himself re-elected following an internationally condemned one-man election last month.

His rival, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the presidential run-off poll citing as the reason the large-scale murder of his party's supporters as well as state-sponsored political violence that saw dozens of homes torched and thousands of people displaced.

Before Tsvangirai pulled out, the Zimbabwe National Students Union Zinasu, the country's main student representative body, announced it was backing Tsvangirai, who defeated Mugabe in the first 29 March poll but could not claim the presidency as he failed to get more than 50% of the vote legally required to do so.

Mwonzora said the students' backing of Tsvangirai had prompted the government to seek ways of controlling universities. He pointed out the vice-chancellor of Midlands State University, Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe, was master of ceremonies at Mugabe's presidential swearing-in last week.

A National Council for Higher education, Mwonzora added, would see Zanu-PF "running institutions of higher learning. Education will be run by political appointees with the aim of winning hearts and minds for Mugabe".

He noted that at its 2006 conference, Zanu-PF passed a resolution calling for the expulsion from universities of lecturers critical of the government.

Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, agreed that the new law would impact negatively on higher education. "How these people are selected could see education becoming an extension of the party," he warned.

An MDC member of Zimbabwe's parliamentary committee on education, Njabuliso Mguni, said the law had been debated and opposed by the committee, but the government proceeded with it anyway: "We do not support that law. It is misguided but the government thinks otherwise," Mguni said.