Church looks for food for Zimbabweans booted from university housing

Published: 2007-07-11

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe is battling to find food to give university students a meal a day while they take exams. Officials at the University of Zimbabwe ordered up to 5,000 students out of university housing July 9 just as they were to begin two weeks of written exams. Alouis Chaumba, head of the Harare-based justice and peace commission, told Catholic News Service in a July 10 telephone interview that the students had been asked to pay additional housing fees of more than a million Zimbabwean dollars (US$4,000), "and most were unable to do that." The students' failure to pay the fee, and July 7 incidents of vandalism on campus that authorities blamed on students, prompted the authorities to order "all students to move off campus," he said. Chaumba said the shortage of accommodations in Harare -- even for those students who have friends to put them up while they take their exams -- and "the scarcity of food makes this a crisis."

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