By Takura Zhangazha*
Writing in the Zimbabwe Independent (11-17 October), journalist and
colleague Herbert Moyo, aptly pointed out the problems that are afflicting
Zimbabwe’s largest university, the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). In his report,
Moyo makes reference to how over a year ago, the former Deputy Prime Minister
Arthur Mutambara had set up a fundraising committee of the institution’s celebrity
ex alumni. The latter committee’s first act was to invite former South African
President, Thabo Mbeki to be a key note speaker at a fundraising dinner.
For at least
trying, were he not a senior government minister, Mutambara cannot be faulted. Except that in this particular case he was. The fundraising
dinner , as outlined in the report by Moyo had celebrity
politicians/businessmen pledging millions of dollars in cash or kind. To date none
of these pledges have materialized. Or are even being talked about by the
authorities and former government leaders that fell over themselves in praise
of a dinner they vaingloriously felt was the epitome of public private
partnerships. As is now apparent, the efforts by Mutambara and co have turned
out to have been attempts at addressing symptoms and not the actual ailment afflicting
the UZ.
To put it bluntly, the root cause of the problems affecting our country’s
largest university is the lack of academic freedom. This has been the deliberately overlooked and
ignored key cause of the malaise of the institution since the effecting of the University of Zimbabwe Act in 1990.
It is a problem that became more compounded
with the decline in the national economy with a simultaneous reduction of government
funding for higher education. Both of which were caused by central government's embracing of now infamous Economic Structural Adjustment
Programme (ESAP) austerity measures. It is
these financial woes that were and have been used by both the government and central
university administration as convenient excuses to stifle academic freedom both
in the past and in present day.
It became a case of economic and academic blackmail driven by the undemocratic and deliberately
stated threat of suffering the loss of academic
freedom or face/see the closure of the university to both students and staff. This threat was to be made even more startling with the undemocratic expulsion of student leaders
and loss of employment for outspoken junior lecturers and academic/non academic staff.
It is the same repressive culture that obtains and was
deliberately ignored by those former students that hosted that now infamous fundraising
dinner over a year ago.
For those that have an interest in the return of the UZ to being
an institution of academic excellence, they must begin by fighting for it to have
academic freedom. They must do so on the basis of seeking first academic freedom
and everything else will follow (to borrow from Kwame Nkrumah’s political
maxim). It is an academic freedom that should be taken to mean the recognition
of the right of all students, academic and non academic staff to freely associate,
assemble and express themselves and to pursue research and study without undue
interference.
All of this achieved within the context of an environment in which the
necessary services such as student loans/grants, accommodation, health, transport,
academic resources, student and staff
unionism, the reduction and re-orientation of the university security from
being akin to a thought/repression force to merely providing basic security on
campus and the placing of direct funding obligations on government for all of
these essential components of a democratic and excellent university.
Where this is done with competent honesty, the UZ will be able to begin
a process of courting the investment it requires to compete both locally and
globally. It is an investment that will reside in the confidence that the
university is being governed in a manner that conforms with the highest standards
and expectations of academic freedom and excellence. This would also serve as being
contrary to the current framework in
which the UZ is being portrayed as a mere corporatist marketing platform for a
few academic departments in order to give prominent individuals in Zimbabwean
society assumptions of philanthropy.
Furthermore, the whole concept of running the UZ like a
private business runs contrary to the right of all Zimbabweans to an education.
While financial self reliance in certain aspects of a public university are expected,
to seek to make profit on the basis of parents ability to pay tuition reflects an
unfortunate comfort with a bottleneck approach to higher education by both the
UZ central administration and its parent government ministry. And most of those in charge of the institution
did not have to pay a single cent to get through their university studies, a
development which they cannot justify to those students that they continually
refuse either results or entry into examination halls.
As I wrote earlier in this blog, the initiative by Mutambara
and co may have been well intended but it was ill thought out. It skirted the
underlying cause of the general crisis at the UZ, this being that of the lack
of academic freedom. It is the establishment of the latter at the UZ that will
lead to more organic resolutions of the crisis at the college.
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