As I speak to you the whole country is facing starvation and no sufficient resources have been mobilized to address this key the challenge. In the middle of all this suffering, the President tells us that $15 billion of diamond revenue has simply disappeared without trace. This is the same thing we were telling him when we were in government and he was not listening to us. But now the chickens have come home to roost. Only in nearby South Africa, President Zuma is in trouble over the US$16 million that he used at his Nkandla home. There is outcry over that money but here, a whole country is in muted silence over billions of dollars that cannot be accounted for. That is the national challenge that we all face; this conspiracy of silence even in the middle of this huge, unmitigated man-made crisis!
So the challenges that we all face are a reflection of this national crisis that we have to confront collectively as a people.
We are in an unmitigated crisis and the facts tell a very grim story—a country with 90 percent unemployment, 14 million people facing starvation, policy consistency in government, a 92 year old President who wants to die in office, an external debt of over $10 billion and a fearful people who can’t utter a word over this sad national predicament. That is the sum total of our national challenge and I would add that the fearful lot also includes energetic, bright young students at our country’s universities who are too lily-livered to confront the political cause of their sad predicament!
Student challenges
I am aware of the challenges facing our students at tertiary colleges and universities. Only last month, I was addressing students at the MSU campus in Zvishavane and I am aware of the challenges that you all face.
They range from overcrowding due to inadequate accommodation, high tuition fees ranging from $500 to $1 400 per semester, inadequate lecture halls, a politicized administration and the victimization of student activists.
I know many students across the country have dropped out, even though affordable education was one of the country’s prime achievements after independence. Here at the University of Zimbabwe, I am well aware of the rot, including a ridiculous ill-fated attempt to force students to pay parking fees! Academic freedom is under threat while the administration has been heavily politicized by a party and government whose head is also the chancellor of all universities.
After all, this is the same university where the chancellor’s wife is said to have acquired a doctorate in murky and very suspicious circumstances that threaten the very standards and credibility of our prime institution of higher learning.
The rot here and at all our universities and tertiary institutions is just but a mirror of the national rot. I am also aware that most female students have resorted to prostitution and other immoral means to survive. This is indeed a national shame because university education must be affordable. After all, education is a basic right under our new Constitution.
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