Without housing, Zimbabwean students likely to quit, says official

Published: 2007-09-21

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- With housing at Zimbabwe's largest university closed for more than two months, many students are likely to drop out as they struggle to find food, shelter and transportation to their lectures, said a church official. Officials at the University of Zimbabwe in the capital, Harare, are defying a high court order to reopen residences they closed in July and "are adamant that they will not let the students return," said Alouis Chaumba, head of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe. "The situation is terribly bad," Chaumba said in a Sept. 21 telephone interview from Harare. He said students "are commuting to the university from all over the country." After students' failure to pay additional housing fees and incidents of vandalism on campus that authorities blamed on students, university officials ordered up to 5,000 students out of university housing July 9 just as they were to begin two weeks of exams. The court order to reopen the residences came a week later.

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