They Called It Academic Genocide Part 8: The Centre No Longer Holding

I had known Cutman for some time and had found him as a very likeable and jovial individual. But there was one trait about him that I didn’t know; bravery. He surprised me when he took over leadership of this protest and defined its course. I could only smile in admiration. He reminded me of the inscription on the t-shirt that I had consciously worn on that day. It was a simple plain white written in black: Born to Rule. Gen 1:28. This was the theme at our church the previous year. ‘Born to rule’, I repeated quietly as Cutman was shaping the path. The mob was roaring in agreement, literally eating from Cutman’s palms. “Aluta Continua!!!” he repeated as if to confirm if the first response he had received was genuine or not. And there he got, another thunderous response. If ever he was in doubt, there was no need anymore. We were all in agreement and had given him the mandate to carry the staff and point where he wanted us to go. “Town, town, town!!!” A few voices shouted. I dreaded with fear. Staging a demonstration in Mt Pleasant was one thing, taking that same demonstration to town was an entirely different thing. State security apparatus were not going to just watch us getting in town. They were going to violently crash this. And funny as it was, they were empowered by the law to do so in what lawyers and human rights activists called ‘rule by law’. 


Town? Given that the country was on crossroads during that time, going to town was going to claim some casualties. The anger from the previous year’s disputed polls and the unending ‘talks’ was still bottled in the people. Going to town would mean escalating this from being just a UZ Students Protest to being a national shutdown of some sort. Inflation had reached world record levels; shortages were in oversupply. A new note had just been printed by the central bank. It was a whopping 100 trillion dollars. Yes, all the 100 trillion dollars bundled together into a single paper which was dispatched for distribution and circulation. The governor had appended his proud and unmistakable signature on it and affixed the words we were all familiar with; ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand’. As a young and curious boy, I had asked my brothers what this meant. We could not reach a consensus, but since there was no Google to bother back then, I believed the theories fed to me. At a later stage, my Commerce teachers also failed to give convincing answers. I had to wait for Google to unpack it for me – years later.

Photo Credit: Zimbabwe dollars.net 

A few days, if not hours, after the note had been released we started hearing some grumblings in the streets. Word had it that public transport operators, in particular taxis and kombis, were rejecting the new note. It was said that they preferred older notes like 50 billion dollars. We didn’t know what it meant. We fell for the explanation they gave that they had no change. But a few weeks later, the authorities budged. The economy was dollarized. Whilst different explanations were later given on who exactly officialised the use of the US dollar in the country, the role played by ordinary kombi drivers and street vendors is often overlooked. Their rejection of the 100 trillion dollars caused the authorities to rethink. Even before the inclusive government was officially inaugurated, on February 15th 2009, the multicurrency use - with the US dollar as the dominant currency - was officialised by the end of January 2009. 

Cutman spoke a few more words before breaking into a song and dance. I still did not know where he was leading us to. That’s the typical dilemma of followers. I had to follow dutifully, wherever he was leading us. We had to trust him, even if it meant going to the CBD, town. After all, I stayed a walking distance from the CBD. I took a few precautions before the march began; fastened my shoelaces and secured my books. They were not in a bag. I then planted myself in the crowd, somewhere strategic, in case of any eventualities. I was right in the middle, coupled with my vertical restrictions, I was completely concealed. I felt confident that no disaster was to get to me that easily. With this newly found sense of security, I sighed and felt a huge relief. Little did I know that disaster was coming from an inescapable direction. A direction that left all the safety precautions in disarray.

We proceeded along Mt Pleasant Drive towards Upper East Road but before going far we saw a police van with a number of cops in full anti-riot gear seated in the bakkie. We were scattered. We quickly and instinctively changed the route, taking a road called Quorn Avenue towards Bond Business Centre. The cops’ car continued along Mt Pleasant Drive. Shortly, we reconvened and reinstated the agenda. Little did we know that the police also wanted to do exactly the same – converge and state their agenda. We stopped at the intersection of Mt Pleasant Drive and Quorn Ave. That’s where the trouble started. Motorists were given strict instructions for safe passage. Those who resisted were denied access or had geology used on them. The peaceful or supposedly peaceful protest then took a wrong turn. Right in the front, I saw some people holding a STOP sign which they had pulled from the ground. They were now using it to control and direct traffic. A few times I heard sounds of shattered glasses. Windscreens were smashed by flying rocks as drivers were attempting to drive away without following the ‘instructions’. One domestic worker from one of the houses along Quorn Ave was providing stones – ammunition – to the rock-throwing students. The centre was no longer holding…

I felt exhausted and wiped some sweat with the back of my palm. A few drops got into my eyes, causing a moment of blindness. I then tried to retrace the day and how it had turned out. Indications were there. In fact, indications have always been there even before I had started college. Whilst reading the then popular Harare tabloid, City.com (now rebranded to H-Metro), sometime in June 2007, I dwelled on a story about a violent protest at the University of Zimbabwe which caused students to be violently ejected out of the university residences. The mayhem was said to have been triggered by a blesser who had caused a scene at the university – in a suspected love triangle - before his car was torched by angry UBAs. However, the ensuing demonstration was no longer limited to the 'blesser incident', which only acted as the Sarajevo Incident. Instead, a lot of grievances were brought to the fore and running battles with the police continued throughout that very chilly June night. All students were thrown out of the university accommodation in which they were accused of grouping and organising ‘heinous’ activities. Throwing them out into the cold, during exams, was seen as the best solution. True to that, the protests died down. But the anger was bottled. The residences were still locked  and inaccessible when the new semester opened in September 2007, temporarily opened in the second semester of 2008 before closing permanently until September 2010. The anger was not suppressed; it was just bottled. Fast forward two years later, at the intersection of Quorn and Mt Pleasant Drive, we were now witnessing the explosion of that anger. I was startled and instantly brought back to life when I heard a female voice screaming followed by some shattering noises – another windscreen had been crashed! As she drove away, I looked away in pain.