MSU students pray for peace, calm

Students going to the MSU library. . . Fourht year students are afraid all the years of education were wasted.

Midlands State University (MSU) Undergraduate students who are now on their fourth and final year of degree programs are worried about the volatile political landscape, as they are afraid they may have to abandon studies, the Varsity Voice has learnt.

The first semester of the year, which usually begins in March, only started in April so as to accommodate the March 29 Harmonised Parliamentary, Presidential, Senatorial and Council elections. But it is the run-off that has raised concern among students, as they are afraid the results may be delayed again, as happened with the Presidential election polls in the first round whereby the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) took about a month to announce Presidential vote ballot result, citing the overwhelming task of vote collation and verification. The University, which has seven faculties, which are Arts, Commerce, Education, Law, Natural Resources Management and Agriculture, Science and Technology and Social Sciences, had offered a lifeline by announcing that the exam timetable, which indicated that exams would start on July 7 to 24, would not be altered.

But it is the recent bombshell by Movement for Democratic Change President, Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw his candidature that has threatened to render insolvent all the four years of academic toil. This has brewed uncertainty in the students, who are starting to see their dreams of prosperity being attacked by weevils. Incidences of political violence have been reported countrywide and it is the students’ wish that the political and socio-economic fabric is not shredded in orgies of politically motivated violence.

A fourth-year Music and Musicology student, who asked not to be named, said that, “I thought by June 30 I would have completed my degree, but now maybe I will have to wait a bit longer, or maybe not even finish it” he said. This view was echoed by a Media and Society Studies student, who said that she only wished the runoff, had been penciled a month later, that is July 27, such that elections would have been conducted while she would have finished her degree.
“I have been doing media monitoring and the latest developments on the political field are disturbing. But all we can do is to be optimistic that this political impasse ebbs soon such that we can finish our degrees. It has been a painful four years,” she said.
Most of the students were enviously eyeing the first week of October, when they graduate and the constant temptation of the 2010 South Africa Word Cup soccer jamboree. The runoff, pitting Mr Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African Natonal Union (ZANU PF) and MDC was necessitated by the fact that in the first election no candidate attained the 51 percent that is needed for one to assume the President’s post.
By Abel Dzobo (edzaidzobo@yahoo.com)