Students Solidarity Trust Newsletter

Students Union Position on TALKS

      The Zimbabwe National Students Union welcomes the commitment by the two main political players in the Zimbabwean politics to negotiations aimed at resolving the political crisis. We however remain suspicious of ZANU Pf and their commitment to genuine negotiations.

We wish to reiterate our earlier position that any negotiated outcome must take into account the will of the people as expressed on the 29th of March 2008. Any other outcome that fails to realise the fact that Zimbabweans went to polls in a fairly free election, at least by Zimbabwean standards, and elected the President of their choice, will not change anything and such an arrangement will be defied.

We further wish to express our displeasure with the inclusion of irrelevant players in these negotions, that is Arthur Mutambara and his confused group. The simple reason being that they don’t have the mandate, “from anyone to represent anyone”, in this process since they did not participate in the Presidential poll held on March 29, 2008.

Any authority, respecting the will of the people, coming out of this process should address the following fundamental issues:

• The delivery of basic services to the nation, education, health, accomodation, food to all Zimbabweans.
• Respect of human rights and the rule of law
• Address issues of truth and justice especially politically motivated atrocities witnessed post March 29.
• Prepare for fresh elections in the shortest possible time to allow the people to bring into office a genuinely democratically elected Government.

A transitional settlement that is a product of a genuine negotiations and respecting the will of the people as expressed on March 29, 2008 is the best way forward for our country. Failure to take congnisance of the March 29 result will not resolve anything as any outcome from such a process will be defied and we wish to make it categorically clear that the students of Zimbabwe will not allow ZANU PF to ursurp power from a democratically elected party, mandated to form the next Governmnet of Zimbabwe. ZINASU will be the first to defy.

The people shall govern,

On behalf the students movement,

Clever Bere

SCMZ to chair Crisis Coalition Youth Committee

The Students Christian Movement of Zimbabwe (SCMZ) will chair the Crisis Coalition Youth Committee for the next two years.SCMZ was elected by members of the youth committee last month.

They are taking over from the Youth Innitiatives for Democracy in Zimbabwe (YIDEZ) who chaired the committee before the elections. The faith based student movement was elected due to their leadership skills within the youth movement. They will be deputized by the Youth Forum which is a radical youth organization .Youth Forum and SCMZ are part of the youth platform which was formed to respond to the current challenges facing the Zimbabwean youth.