UZ student leaders held in fees protest

UZ student leaders held in fees protest

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By Staff Reporter

POLICE in Zimbabwe Monday arrested another eight university students amid escalating protests over massive fee hikes, a lawyer said.

The students, from the University of Zimbabwe, are being detained at Matapi Police Station in the high-density suburb of Mbare, said Otto Saki of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR).

A student representative, Promise Mkwananzi, said that his colleagues addressed a student meeting on Monday morning and then were "urged to march to the vice-chancellor's office."

"The police barricaded the way" and arrested the eight students, said Mkwananzi.

One of the detained is Washington Katema, the president of the Zimbabwe National Students' Union (ZINASU).

Lawyer Saki said ZLHR had lodged a High Court application to secure the release of the detained students.

Protests have been mounting over shock fee hikes announced earlier this month for many institutions of higher learning in Zimbabwe. In some cases the new fees - which were reportedly approved by the government - were ten times more than those for last year.

At least 21 students were arrested earlier this month for staging a violent protest against fee hikes at the National University of Science and Technology in the country's second city of Bulawayo.

Students complain that with the new fees education will become a preserve only of the very rich. According to Mkwananzi, only a few hundred students have been able to pay the new fees at the University of Zimbabwe.

Many Zimbabweans - young and old alike - are struggling to keep afloat in an economy characterised by inflation of more than 613 per cent and frequent price increases.

Also on Monday, the ZLHR lodged an official complaint with the commissioner of police and the attorney general over the "inhuman and degrading" conditions in which students have been kept in Harare police cells in earlier incidents - Sapa-dpa
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