02-11-2020

Just a day before the release of Terrence Manjengwa, who spend more than 60 days in prison before trial, two other young activists were caged at Harare Remand Prison.

The two, Prince Gora and Young Matate are student leaders and their only crime is demanding answers from Impala Car Rental on why the company aided in abduction of fellow student, Tawanda Muchehiwa.

This is not the first time that Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime has raised a middle finger on the students community for demanding a safe learning environment.

ZINASU President Takudzwa Ngadziore, had to spend more than a month in prison for simply demanding a safe environment where students study without fear of abductions from the regime.

A regime that do not respect students certainly has no respect for academic freedoms and such a regime is doomed!

Universities and tertiary institutions are meant to be a universitas when knew horizons of knowledge are shared and at the center of that is a student.

What this entails is that students’ sphere of influence like homes must be safe from evils like abductions if the country is to reap benefits from academics.

Where abductions and arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of students reigns supreme, disaster looms.

Mnangagwa’s regime has since turned Harare Remand Prison and Chikurubi Maximum Prison into concentration camps for student leaders and political activists.

For Mnangagwa, the rightful place of students is filthy prisons and not university campuses!

It time for the students community and the society at large to demand for an end to persecution by prosecution of students.

If students and youths of the past successfully challenged the evil colonial system in the 1970s, surely this generation can equally do the same against abductions, arbitrary arrests and sentence without trial.

Gora and Matate deserve freedom.

#FreeYoungAndPrince!

Stephen Sarkozy Chuma
MDC Alliance Youth Assembly National Spokesperson