By Paul Lwando
Ndola
SOME 10 years ago, in the wake of the tragic death of former Finance Minister, Ronald Penza, this writer penned an obituary in this same newspaper and the focus was on Penza’s days as a student activist at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in the early 1970s.
The spirit of the obituary was to eulogise the heroic role, which UNZA students historically played in fighting political oppression and bureaucratic intransigence. It meant to provide a voice for a voiceless citizenry that was prevailed upon by an-all-mighty State machinery prone to the arbitrary control of a clique of self-interested individuals.
During that period, Penza was secretary general of the University of Zambia Students’ Union (UNZASU), in which capacity he organised a march to the French Embassy in Lusaka, to protest against the French government’s decision to supply sophisticated military weapons, including Mirage fighter jets, to the apartheid regime of South Africa.
The students reckoned, and rightly so, that this high-handed move by the French would seriously set back the struggle for the liberation of southern Africa and spawn general political instability in the region. The then UNIP government, although principally in agreement with the students’ position, was understandably apprehensive about the political ramifications of this unbridled diplomatic assault on a major European power like France.
Therefore, even though UNIP and its government were then positioning themselves as the citadel of the regional liberation struggle, they forcibly blocked the student procession, with riot police being deployed for the purpose. Students, on their part, refused to budge, and what ensued was teargas, gunfire and mayhem, during which one student climbed the mast at the French Embassy and tore down that nation’s flag.
Whatever the political fall-out followed this violent confrontation, history has honoured those students as having, in their own rambunctious way, contributed to the long, tortuous process of dismantling the apartheid regime and liberating southern Africa.
In reflecting on the recent disturbances at UNZA, during which two students sustained police gunshot wounds while agitating for increased allowances, this writer could not help but marvel at how drastically the constitution of student militancy has evolved over the years.
The long and short lessons of the Penza obituary are that it can never be written for contemporary student activists. For Penza was a person whose reputation for student militancy was buttressed by a lofty pursuit of political and ideological ideals for the betterment of greater society!
The debate on the adequacy or inadequacy of student allowances without venturing into the highly-charged debate on the adequacy or inadequacy of student allowances is always fraught with undue emotions, intrigue and bureaucratic rigidity, in addition to being highly-charged.
In contemporary times, hardly a year goes by without news of student unrest at one or both of the country’s public universities (that’s discounting the new, yet to be baptised Mulungushi University).
Indeed, this perennial tale of woes has assumed such permanency that the problems at UNZA, and by extension the Copperbelt University (CBU), begin to look intractable and gain acceptance as some sort of inevitable nuisance to be lived with. This is not only an unfortunate but dangerous eventuality! The problem of student unrest, and other associated maladies, is a soluble one, if only all stakeholders could openly and honestly put their minds and energies to it!
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to examine the nature and background of student unrest in Zambia. Just how and why do ordinary, law-abiding boys and girls straight from grade 12 suddenly transform into rampaging, stone-throwing rioters?
During this author’s time as a student leader, he became fascinated by this question and embarked on a background research, which gleaned him interesting historical insights into student militancy at UNZA.
Planting the seed
In the fashion of most post-independence African states, generally characterised by a gravitation towards totalitarian modes of governance, the head-of-state also assumed direct headship or control of key state or parastatal institutions. Thus, in Zambia, the Republican president also became Chancellor of the University of Zambia. This arrangement was to spawn two unfortunate traditions, which persist to this day, and which in large part, account for the institution’s endless troubles in dispute resolution.
Firstly, all disputes at the institution – disputes which could be routinely resolved through ordinary bargaining and negotiation mechanisms within any organisation – found their way to the office of the Head-of-State, or the Chancellor, as the disputants always referred to him. Thus, emphasising his chosen role as the institution’s ultimate buck-stopper!
Therefore, State House became an extension of the university management, something akin to the board chairman of a company assuming the responsibility of signing salary cheques. The seat of republican authority thus, became a clearing house for the problems associated with the running of the university, be they about students, support staff, lecturers or management itself; and all these stakeholders naturally felt free to “seek an audience with the chancellor any time”.
This development had the unfortunate effect of rendering redundant, the established structures, systems and boundaries of managing the affairs of the university, both at institutional and ministerial levels.
Well thought-out long-term strategies as well as professionally crafted operational plans at these two levels could easily be dismissed with a presidential wave of the hand if political expediency beckoned.
Management of the university thus became something of an adhoc affair, dangling on the string of political largesse. To this day, it has to take the Republican president to step in and promise to “look for money” to bridge budgetary shortfalls for UNZA and CBU, as happened recently. It is also possible for the UNZASU president to demand an audience with the Head-of State, in order to discuss student allowances and police brutality.
The second aspect of the State-university arrangement was that the university, like all other key institutions, was seen by the political authority not as an independent entity with an autonomous mandate, namely the free and un-tethered pursuit of knowledge, but as an instrument for furthering the agenda of the politico-bureaucratic regime. In other words, the university was not supposed to generate or propagate any ideas or innovations outside of, inimical to, or contemptuous of, the political leadership’s ideological orientation.
But inevitably, mutual suspicion and often-outright hostility, developed between the State and the university. During that period of anti-imperialist hyper consciousness (which often-times approached stark paranoia), the UNIP government sought to have absolute control over anything that had potential to condition the thinking of citizens.
In the growing militancy and anti-establishment tendencies of UNZA students, therefore, government soon perceived a threat, which it ‘traced’ to Marxist propaganda purveyed by expatriate lecturers at the institution.
On its part, the university establishment strongly detested the overly patronising attitude of UNIP and government towards the university, which it saw as constraining its universally acknowledged mandate of providing an environment for free learning and objective generenable production at the plant to finally take off.
[Times of Zambia]
