By IPS Correspondents
HARARE, Oct 18 1996 (IPS)

Fortune Mguni, a third-year Law student here is worried that a government decision compelling university students to meet half of their annual fees may cut short his studies.

“This move is just a cosmetic way of saying go back home, we have expelled you technically,” Mguni, acting president of the University of Zimbabwe Student Representative Council (SRC), told IPS on Friday. “We don’t have the financial capability. Whether its 50 percent or whatever, the point is we don’t have the money.”

The new policy announced Wednesday by Higher Education Minister Ignatius Chombo, is likely to affect thousands of students from the country’s five universities, although the minister said students who can prove their parents’ inability to pay part of their tuition fees will be given special assistance.

The government said the move, which will go into effect from the start of the 1997 academic year (March next) will save the state three million U.S. dollars a year.

Annual fees at Zimbabwe’s universities average about 1,650 U.S. dollars per student. Under the existing system, students are awarded scholarships that cover their entire tuition. Some of this comes in the form of a grant, while the rest is a loan repayable in instalments after graduation.

Under the new system, the scholarships will cover half of the tuition cost. Sixty percent of the state’s assistance will come in the form of a low-interest loan and the remainder will be a grant.

Students staged a peaceful demonstration Thursday at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) after learning about the new system which continued to be the main topic of discussions on the UZ’s campus here on Friday.

“The government has betrayed the nation and if the students agree to such a treacherous thing they would be even more treacherous than the government,” said Mguni.

“It is at its best an embarrasment and it’s a radical departure from the main concept of the policy of education for all by the year 2000,” he added. “Government has now made sure that it’s virtually impossible for all to get education.”

The move has also not gone down well with parents who accuse the government of getting it priorities wrong.

Some of them questioned the logic behind the purchase of a helicopter — which, according to the weekly ‘Independent’ here, cost 15 million U.S. dollars and is to be used by the military and President Robert Mugabe — and the buying of 48 Mercedes Benz sedans for last month’s Solar Summit when the state needs to cut back on its spending.

“Now they see the need to save money but when it is them, they do not even spare a second to think about,” said a civil servant who was one of thousands of state employees who went on strike two months ago to demand pay increases.

According to Chombo, the move is aimed at having those who can afford to pay take care of their children’s tuition instead of the state paying for everybody.

“…the taxpayers’ money should only be used to help students who cannot afford these fees,” the semi-official daily, ‘The Herald’, quoted him as saying. “…the purpose of our scheme of scholarships is to assist students in need of help and not everyone, as we have tried to do since independence.”

But, said the civil servant, “everyone knows that the children of the chefs are being educated by the governement while our students will stay at home because we can’t afford the fees.”

“Ian Smith (prime minister of then Rhodesia from 1965 to 1980) must be having the last laugh. We have gone back to the policies of Rhodesia,” said Mguni.

“Rhodesian policy was such that education should be for a specific number of Blacks who would be trained and then be used by the colonialists,” he added. “Now we have gone back to that scenario and as students we really take exception and reject it in total.”

Chombo has asked the SRC to give reasons why the government should not go ahead with its plans but Mguni vowed that whether or not the government has a genuine case, the students would fight the new policy “by any means necessary.”

Other students took a similar stance. “The government must know that this is non-starter,” said Taurai Gwesi, a second-year Arts student. “We cannot tolerate this. We are even prepared to wage a nationwide boycott of lectures.

“The students are very angry and shocked and are going to make it practically impossible for it to happen.”

Mguni said that, in addition to staying away from lectures, the students might “ultimately boycott the exams”. He added: “If we don’t do that, next year no one will be here. There will only be children from the ruling class. The UZ will be deserted.

“If the rich guys want to have their own special university why don’t they create one rather than taking the national university? This is a conspiracy to bring the sons and daughters of the rich to our university not by virtue of academic excellence but financial capability.”

Excerpt: