Degrees in outrage
Male students at the University of Zimbabwe are going to find themselves turfed out of res when the campus opens for classes later this month.
I couldn’t find a written news article on it, but according to Studio 7 VOA , the University of Zimbabwe information department has issued a statement saying that no male students will be housed on campus when the semester begins in two weeks time.
The government has announced fee increases of between 300% – 2000% for university students, and the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) has pledged an indefinite boycott should these increases not be reversed.
The UZ plan will evict some 1500 of the 4000 campus residents from their accommodation, and will open the housing up for women. The move is clearly meant to reduce the potential for student organising and mobilisation in the face of student protests. University students had suggested that they would come to campus when the new semester begins, but would refuse to go to classes.
One student who was interviewed on VOA said a number of UZ students will now not be able to attend lectures due to high transport costs. The students get government grants of less than $5,000, which isn’t enough to cover even one day’s transport to and from the university, much less lodging costs or regular commuting costs to the university.
UZ Student Representative Council Vice President Clifford Hlatshwayo called the plan “barbaric and diabolic,” and rightly described it as gender discrimination.
Imagine being in your final semester at university and not being able to finish because you’ve been kicked out your residence and you can’t afford to go back and forth to campus. Imagine being a first year student and not getting to even start your programme for similar reasons. I can understand the frustration and outrage at this move. It is just one more example of the state’s authoritarian and arbitrary decision-making style that sweeps aside any sense of what people really need and want.
So when I heard that Hlatshwayo also said that the action was turning the UZ into more of “a girls’ high school” than a university, I decided not to take offence. Sure, he could more accurately and less patronisingly have said that it was turning it into a women’s university. But he didn’t.
As much as I sympathise with his and other male students’ entirely understandable frustration, a small part of me does wistfully imagine that the women might surprise us, and this could be a big break for female solidarity, mobilising and resistance. If the UZ thinks 1500 angry men are a threat, imagine 4000 women organising their complaints – including, for example, the fact that the $5,000 grant doesn’t provide enough for sanitary ware either – and facing down the university administration with outrage and determination.
Clearly the UZ administration has never heard that expression: the female of a species is more deadly than the male.