The Suffering of youth in Zimbabwe

Students speaking out through Freeafrica
Freeafrica (January 10, 2005)

Photo: taken from Zwnews.com
Who can even try to imagine the fate of the children getting an education under Mugabe’s most destructive child abusive regime?

Sqaliso and Sithulisile are two teenage students living in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe who recently wrote the following testimonials about their opinions of life in Zimbabwe. These youth are just a tip of the iceberg to the suffering, stress and trauma that the Zimbabwe Zanu P.F. terrorist-like regime is delivering mercilessly upon our innocent youth.


The two youth wrote: we were introduced to the freeafrica website by a candid reader of the website who used to visit our school beginning of the year 2004. We really appreciate the work that your website is doing to motivate and encourage us, the youth here in Zimbabwe regarding the inevitable justice and freedom we seek to fight and struggle for.

We have some information and or opinions that we want to share with the Freeafrica independent media. As concerned youth of Zimbabwe we are beginning to feel that this country will probably never have that which our parents have always talked about – freedom. This we say, because we see our supposed leaders here, all or most of them turning into selfish greedy men and women who are only interested in feeding themselves, their families and their cronies. These leaders, so to speak, are least concerned about the future development of the country. They are not even concerned about the livelihoods, health and safety of the country’s future leaders, the youth.

It is very depressing for youth like us when we see major issues concerning the future; our future, being swept under the carpet in sacrifice for the comfort and luxury of greedy and merciless dictators and oppressors.

Zimbabwe is currently one of the hardest hit countries of the world by the deadly AIDS desease. Yet less time is spent informing us the youth here, about the deadly desease. We are instead overwhelmed with political party propaganda which has turned most of our fellow youths into human killing machines in the ‘national service’ youth camps. We are only informed so little about the availability and usefulness of important drugs such as the anti-retroviral drugs for the treatment of the AIDS virus. As youth mostly at risk of contracting the Aids virus, many of us here feel that this world renowned drug for AIDS/HIV should be made available freely to people in high risk with the virus –– just like South Africa has done for its people suffering with the Aids virus.

While so many of our people here in Zimbabwe live lives well below the poverty line of any country, our supposed government continues to ignore these real issues and instead preferring to spend all the country’s scarce resources and finances on leaders’ selfish needs that help them cling longer in power. Our supposed government is busy funding unproductive projects that will soon explode like time-bombs well before their eyes in the near future. Such are projects and programs like the notorious militia youth training program where youths like us are trained to kill and torture fellow citizens.

There are organizations also in this country, like international NGOs which are serious on helping the many suffering people in our country, but these organizations are now being forced to close down because of selfish censorships and new regulations aimed at paralyzing them. Those NGOs that remain behind are at the hard grip of government hands and only service communities favorable to Mugabe’s regime. There is no equal distribution of food to starving communities across the country.

The media is also silenced and threatened upon reporting the truth. Education is at a stand still. The most basic right of every child to receiving primary education has been trampled upon by the dictators and oppressors. While every child has a right to basic primary education, in Zimbabwe this is not the case. Many of the youth now in our schools cannot even write a complaint letter if they were abused or felt a need to express their opinions, and this, we feel is the aim of the Mugabe government, to produce a generation of illiterate killer machines that will work like zombies to satisfy and maintain ZANU P.F’s brutal hold on to power.

To many of us youth, we still envy to witness the Zimbabwe (bread basket of Africa) that our parents so often talk passionately about. It should be our legal right to be in a good and safe country ruled by safe leaders, and not just hearsay and history. We want to see an end to the continuing tribal feuds that are being brewed and promoted by the greedy leaders. We also want to see an end to the racial discrimination and any other form of discrimination that strips human beings of their basic right to enjoy a good independent life. We do not need another civil war looming in Zimbabwe. We want to say NO! to another Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda or Iraq kind of war.

In light of all the above difficulties we are faced with as hostages of an illegitimate regime, we would like organizations like Freeafrica to speak out on our behalf and promote world focus to our plight. Our voices can only be heard so far from within the country here in Zimbabwe, since even the rumour of such a pleading victim’s voice for help could lend one in the execution lists of the regime’s secret police. People who say Zimbabweans will solve their own dilemma in the face of this killing regime are just playing damn ignorant and it’s a shame on them. We need the involvement of the international community to rid of this monstrous Mugabe regime. Zimbabweans who know what it is like to face a dangerously armed enemy like Zanu PF when you are not armed yourself, know we need outside help to get Mugabe and his cronies out.

N.B: Freeafrica is inviting and encouraging more students from all African countries, in Universities, Colleges and or Secondary/High Schools to contribute to wards freeafrica’s biweekly updates. Articles written can be of any subject and/or opinion, political and/or non-political. We are here to promote free expression and speech.

To read more on the Destruction of the Zimbabwe Education system by Mugabe’ Zanu P.F regime Click Here.