After a strenuous 386-kilometre bus journey, I arrived at the Shabanie mining town in the Midlands Province. This is a dusty outpost surrounded by low hills with red soils, I suppose the name Zvishavane being a derivative of the Shona term “shava” connoting red.
Prince L Ngwenya
Besides the low hills, one is welcomed by a very energetic and lively population totally oblivious of the town’s smudged, sooty air.
Everyone goes about their business as a fleet of Toyota fun cargo commuter vehicles shuttle residents to and fro. With such lively activity, I was confused as to why the apparent “ghost town” status was ascribed to such an alive town! In my mind, I had this idea of us students reincarnating a town certified as deceased, possibly with hyperactive ghosts criss-crossing the neighbourhoods at the speed of light. Now that we have brought more life, I am not so sure if this reincarnation is splendid or it will unleash a Tsunami of skeletons tumbling down the distant, asbestos-white valleys. For once in our lives, we are confronted with the good, the bad and the ugly.
I begin with the beauty of this new life. According to the outgoing Vice-Chancellor Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe, Midlands State University brought over $100 million worth of investment to Gweru. Which means Zvishavane over the years will amass such figures as the number of students is set to increase. For the past months, we students have been a beam of light to this forgotten outpost as we inject economic life against a backdrop of a deteriorating economy. With high-altitude unemployment figures haunting Zvishavane ever since Mutumwa Mawere’s Shabanie-Mashaba Mines were expropriated, the sudden deluge of students has lit up the proverbial dark tunnel. Local fathers, mothers, sons and daughters who might have been agonising over uncertainties of the future now have something to look forward to.
Shrewd business people and town dwellers have anticipated the accommodation demand, building or turning their houses into boarding houses for desperate students. These people are getting scarce hard cash and for some, this windfall is calibrated in thousands. This has increased cash flow in the community thus a boon to banks, town council and shops. Taxi drivers are also having an early Christmas as students rely on them for their daily travels around the town. The taxi drivers comprise mainly of young people who probably were not employed but had to convince car owners to run pirate errands for cashing money every night.
There also has been a culinary explosion. Zvishavane women can be seen in their scores outside the campus gates, with canteens stretching across where famished students in their thousands quench their appetites. This is capital generation for the locals as they take reasonable amounts of money home. I remember as I ordered some food during my final examinations one lady lamented: “Pamuchaenda kuhoridhe tichafa nenzara”. [When you guys go back home for holidays, we shall starve.]This is testimony to how these “catering queens” depend entirely on us now for their livelihoods. Imagine how much capital they would have accumulated end of every semester?
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When I meet various business owners and managers, they exhibit juvenile excitement about our “good” presence in Zvishavane. Why not, as they salivate for financial improvement in their businesses? The town, which had been facing economic hardships after the closure of the mine now, has new hope. The big supermarkets like OK, TM and Pote with investments in retail, hardware, hospitality all confirmed that business has never been this good. I personally would visit the Innscor manager weekly who spends sleepless nights pondering on how to please students now his leading clientele. “Our sales and demand for our products have increased unwaveringly since students came,” the Innscor general manager, Itai Timburwa says.
Private players in the medical sector have also firmly established as student visits keep them busy 24/7. “Before students came my schedule was normal. Ever since MSU established here, l have been on the go and tied up on any day or hour,” says Dr S Manyara — a General Practitioner.
Former town secretary, Tinoda Mukutu also said he was happy MSU has set up its campus and this would be a cue for major investments. The council’s finance committee chairperson Fatuma Phiri also showed faith that the town council would benefit and recover from debt pressure exerted by the closure of Shabanie-Mashaba Mines.
As the proverbial love story of a widower (Zvishavane) who was on the brink of death is invigorated by a young lady (MSU) hits the headlines, there is a bad side to this script.
I was fortunate enough to be first driven to college by my father who assisted in securing on-campus accommodation. As we drove to the college, I could see colleagues arriving in a new town — baffled and drained — dragging huge bags as they anxiously inquired from locals the direction of the campus or where they could secure accommodation. By then, the deadly mid-day Zvishavane sun was at its solar worst.
I was aware that the move was intent on scaling down pressure off the main Gweru campus, but the dearth of formal accommodation was bound to be an inconvenience to us. By now, some landlords exploit students, charging monthly rentals of up to $120. Other students managed to set themselves up in surrounding areas like Mapanzuli — 10 kilometres outside Zvishavane. The cost of daily transport to and from campus is choking. Such cost will remain a headache to both students and their parents. MSU registrar, Erasmus Mupfiga, assures students about better quality accommodation, and one hopes such promises will be fulfilled sooner rather than later. So till then I guess those in those situations will have to live that way. What is a shame being that students in Gweru and Zvishavane pay similar fees and belong to the same institution but are exposed to totally different lives.
And for the ugly side. Two large masses of people conflating to make one general public is a fusion bound to cause sparks. Zvishavane is a mining town and it is general knowledge that such “outposts” live in a certain way. Blood money from the makorokoza (gold panners), drugs and alcohol abuse, sex workers, violence are some ills that afflict such towns. Imagine the students being exposed to such “social dungeons” for tertiary education! These misdemeanours might be found everywhere, but in Zvishavane things are excessive. Eight solid months of exposure to such drama is a tragedy of untold proportions! Generally, college students are adults, but to compel them to live in such places is akin to writing an examination in a bar! Yes, one can write but concentration and for that matter, passing that exam is difficult. It is common sense that young ladies exposed to “predators in work suits, hard hats and steel cap toe safety shoes” is an unfolding tragedy of sexual abuse. Are young male students exposed to “predatory sex-starved grandmothers with receding, grey hairlines”? Yes!
So did MSU authorities and related ministry consider this ugliness as they moved and removed us from Gweru?
l Prince-Lifalethu Ngwenya is a student of Politics and Public Administration; president of the students political association at the MSU Zvishavane Campus. He writes in his personal capacity and can be on mobile phone 0782664900 and email address: [email protected]
