Zimbabwe’s unemployed graduates protest against jobs crisis

Images of gowned graduates vending on Harare’s streets have gone viral on social media, highlighting a jobs crisis that starkly contrasts with President Robert Mugabe’s 2013 election promise to deliver more than two million jobs by 2018.

Unemployed graduates, whose plans for a protest march in Harare on August 3 hang in doubt after the police refused to sanction it, have since erupted in seemingly spontaneous dissent.

Images of graduates selling mobile phone airtime and assorted goods on Harare’s crowded pavements have gripped public attention in a country that has seen a series of protests in the past few months over Mugabe’s handling of Zimbabwe’s economy, which is slowly sliding back into recession.

After a decade-long economic crisis, during which GDP shrunk by as much as 40 percent according to official figures and hyperinflation reached an eye-popping 500 billion percent by December 2008, Zimbabwe’s economic reprieve which saw an average growth of 7 percent between 2009 and 2012 has since come off following Mugabe’s disputed re-election in 2013.

According to the official statistics agency, Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate stands at 11.3 percent, but independent analysts hotly dispute the figure – which captures huge swathes of the informal and communal farming sectors.

Independent analysts say Zimbabwe’s jobless rate is northwards of 90 percent.

With an estimated 300 000 graduates walking out of Zimbabwe’s 16 universities and extensive technical college network annually, the country’s floundering economy, starved of investment and job creation, can scarcely absorb enough young job seekers.

Analysts blame Mugabe’s indigenisation policy — which ironically formed the basis of his ZANU-PF’s other-worldly job creation target of 2 million — for scaring away investors who are critical in job creation.

The jobless graduates, through the Zimbabwe Coalition of Unemployed Graduates, plan to present a petition to the Parliament of Zimbabwe on August 3, highlighting their dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.

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