Harassment of leaders dissuades gendered student activism

Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) Gender Secretary Nancy Njenge (22) has been arrested three times in less than 10 months and is facing criminal charges in three different cases before the magistrate’s court in Harare.

Njenge was arrested for the first time in September 2020 for staging a sit-in at the same court, protesting against the arrest of fellow student leaders.

She was thrown into an overcrowded and unhygienic cell and contracted COVID-19.

The second occasion was on 26 February 2021 when she was arrested together with two other female student activists after they were walking wearing ZINASU T-shirts in Harare’s city centre. They have been charged with “unnecessary movement”.

On 7 May 2021, Njenge was arrested again for wearing a ZINASU T-shirt.

She was in court during the first week of June 2021 to answer the charges relating to her arrests in February 2021 and September 2020. Prosecutors say the third case, emanating from her arrest on 7 May, will proceed by way of a summons.

Njenge’s harassment follows a growing trend in which Zimbabwean authorities are targeting current and former women student leaders to dissuade other women from venturing into student activism.

Joana Mamombe, Zimbabwe’s youngest MP at 27 years and a former ZINASU gender secretary, and two other former student leaders are being prosecuted after they participated in a demonstration last year.

Following their arrest and before the women could be booked, they were abducted from the police station by unidentified armed men. They were beaten and sexually assaulted before being dumped on the side of the road the next day.

Instead of investigating their complaints – and despite their visible injuries – the police charged the three women with fabricating allegations.

In an interview with University World News, Njenge said the arrest of students has taken a gender dimension to block more women from student activism and the strategy appears to be working. She said the arrests are all about persecution and instilling fear.

“To some extent, the arrests have a gender dimension. Women tend to be vulnerable, we tend to be emotional, so once they arrest us, they instil fear in other female students. Already, we have students who do not want to associate with ZINASU because they fear the government, they are scared of the state,” she said.

Scare tactics?

Njenge said the women are afraid because they hear so many stories about women student leaders being persecuted and beaten.

“They hear so much about me being arrested, coming out and being arrested again. So, it scares away a lot of women from taking up the space to participate actively in student activism. These arrests affect other female students. I think they do it intentionally to scare away young females from participating,” she said.

According to Njenge, the treatment they are subjected to after their arrest is meant to break their spirits. The filthy toilets do not flush and there is no toilet paper, nor sanitary pads. There are concrete bunk beds, and one is given flea-infested blankets, she said, describing her experience in detention.

“There is only one remand place in Harare for women, which is Chikurubi Maximum Prison where you mix with people who have committed murder, robberies. Such serious crimes ... but yours is just addressing a press conference or maybe a demonstration, freely expressing yourself, freely asking government to respond to your concerns.

“So, imagine yourself in Chikurubi Maximum Prison with all those kinds of people. It actually scares off other young women from participating,” Njenge said.

Kudzaishe Mavhumashava, the education and research secretary of ZINASU, said it seems that the government has instructed police to arrest anyone found wearing the student union’s regalia, including T-shirts and face masks. “We have Njenge with three pending cases before the court. We have Paida Masaraure, with two pending cases. We have three other women arrested in March in Harare,” he said.

Musa Kika, the director of the Zimbabwe NGO Forum, said the increased arrests suggest that more students are becoming conscious and more engaged with their civic duty to defend the rule of law, constitutionalism and advancing human rights. He said the student movement in Zimbabwe has a history of standing for what is right and there is now a reawakening.

“We say this is persecution because students who speak out in other areas are not harassed and these are students who are expressing their right to protest, their right to free speech who are falling foul of the regime. It is not because they have breached any law but they are doing something unpalatable in the eyes of the regime,” he said.

“We see them being arrested and [they] are denied bail in the magistrate’s court. We then see them being incarcerated or detained for several days, often at the maximum-security prisons without actually going for trial or having been found guilty.

“That is actual persecution to use the criminal justice system to punish. This is all being done to break their spirits and to send an example to other young people to say: ‘If you speak out against the regime, we will come after you’,” said Kika.