No kissing or sex please, you’re students – Zimbabwe University

(Pic: Flickr / D Smith)
(Pic: Flickr / D Smith)

The Zimbabwe students’ union on Thursday made war not love over a new code of conduct banning students from kissing on campus at the country’s top university.

In a circular displayed at halls of residence, authorities at the University of Zimbabwe said students “caught in any intimate position such as kissing or having sex in public places” would be punished.

The university also barred resident students from bringing members of the opposite sex to their hostels and “loitering in dark places outside the sports pavilion or lecture venues”.

Student leader Gilbert Mutubuki said students would resist the rules introduced two weeks ago.

“We are against these rules which we view as archaic, repressive and evil,” Mutubuki, president of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinassu) told AFP.

“We are urging students to resist the rules. These rules reduce the university to a primary school. The authorities need to be reminded that this is an institute for adults who are mature.”

He said the rules, which also bar students from accommodating non-resident colleagues, were meant to curtail students’ right to associate.

“We believe these are security measures meant to limit students from associating.”

Until Zimbabwe introduced tough security laws, university students often staged anti-government protests, sometimes joining forces with trade unions and rights groups.

Ebola and the outbreak of stupidity

Given the extent of the Ebola epidemic, it’s obvious that people should take proactive and preventative measures against it. The death toll has exceeded 4 500, and the worst-affected countries in West Africa are battling to contain it. On the one hand, volunteers like Kathryn Stinson, bloggers like Edith Brou and sites like Ebola Deeply are genuinely doing their bit to help raise awareness. On the other, the US media and paranoid Americans are responding with hysteria and misinformation. Now we have what’s dubbed fearbola. Really though, it’s just stupidity in bad disguise.

So, world, here’s what you shouldn’t do:

1. Ask ridiculous questions. 

cnnebola

Teju Cole won’t always have the time to answer them.

2. Remove your children from their school in Mississippi because you’ve found out that the principal recently visited Zambia. Capture

Quick geography lesson: Zambia is in Southern Africa, not West Africa, and has no confirmed cases of Ebola. ‘Mississippi on Alert’, then, for no good reason.

3. Avoid going to a store because someone who has Ebola went there too.

A nurse visited a bridal store in Ohio shortly before being diagnosed with the virus. Now no one is shopping there because: paranoia. To convince customers to return, the owners have scrubbed their shop down and brought in ultraviolet ray machines to rid it of any traces of the virus. This, after the health department told them it was unnecessary as Ebola doesn’t live long enough on surfaces to pose a risk.

4. Fly in this outfit

This photo of a woman in a homemade protective suit at Dulles International Airport outside Washington has gone viral, and not because her outfit is on trend. There have been eight cases of Ebola in the US; gloves, a mask and body gown are not necessary here.

5. Prevent kids from attending a New Jersey school because they’re from Rwanda which has zero reported cases of Ebola and is over 4 000km  from the affected West African countries.

Two East African students were meant to begin classes on Monday at a school in New Jersey, but following a backlash from other parents, the school asked them to stay home for three weeks. Rwanda (perhaps in retaliation to this incident?), announced on Tuesday that it will start screening all Americans entering the country for Ebola, regardless of whether they are exhibiting symptoms or not.

The list could go on – from a man in Cleveland charged for inducing panic after he made a my-wife-has-ebola joke, to a college in Texas that has rejected applicants from (Ebola-free) Nigeria.

As panic and ignorance about the epidemic continue to spread, it would be more useful to rely on facts instead of fear-mongering. Pack away the Hazmat suits and pick up a map.

Harare demolitions: Residents say they’re not going anywhere

A Chitungwiza resident at what used to be her home. (Pic: Kumbirai Mafunda)
A Chitungwiza resident at what used to be her home. (Pic: Kumbirai Mafunda)

Eleanor Magaya was close to tears as she narrated how she has been continuously duped of her hard-earned cash by land barons.

“Shuwa ndongoita mari yekurasa veduwee?” (Should I keep on pouring money into waste?) she asked. Her house is one of the thousands that were razed down by authorities in Chitungwiza, 25km north of Harare. Residents say their homes were built legally but authorities disagree. Many were evicted while others had their homes destroyed.

In September, the Chitungwiza Municipality authorities razed down 70 residential and business buildings at midnight. On the other end the Harare City Council served 324 settlers in the high-density suburb of Glen Norah with eviction notices. So far, the demolitions in Glen Norah have not proceeded as residents armed with axes and knobkerries faced off with the police, forcing them to withdraw. Residents in Epworth (15km outside Harare) also had their houses destroyed and are facing eviction from the local authorities.

Chitungwiza town clerk, George Makunde, highlighted the demolitions were set to rid the town of illegal structures which were built on undesignated areas. “As long as people continue to illegally occupying council land, the demolitions will continue,” says Makunde.

However, the Zimbabwe High Court ordered the government to stop the unconstitutional evictions and demolition process. On October 9, Judge Nicholas Mathonsi ruled that the authorities would need a court order to demolish any more houses. Hundreds of people have been left homeless as a result of this government exercise, and it is unclear whether they will be compensated for their loss of property or be relocated.

Illegal or not?
A government audit of illegal structures carried out in December 2013 found that more than 14 000 residential stands in and around Chitungwiza had been illegally sold by housing co-operatives, councillors and village leaders. Much of the land where stands were illegally created were meant for the construction of clinics, schools, cemeteries, roads and wetlands.

Following the release of the report in January, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Deputy Minister Joel Biggie Matiza was quoted in the state-owned daily The Herald, committing to a “well organised, humane” demolition process that would ensure all affected families were offered alternative land.

The residents of these “illegal structures” have vowed to remain at their stands and are threatening to fight back the move.

“I will not go anywhere, I paid for this land, I am not staying here for free”, Nomatter Matikiti, a Chitungwiza resident, said.

Housing backlog
According to the audited report, Zimbabwe has a staggering housing backlog of 1.3-million and government and local authorities are struggling to keep pace with ever-increasing urban housing demands.

The report fingered land barons and proliferation of housing co-operatives who came in as gap fillers, amassing wealth for themselves .

Dzimbahwe Chimbga, programmes manager for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said the demolitions “are quite devastating and disturbing as most of these people have only these homes and no other place to seek refuge. They happened at a time when not only the economy is ailing but as rains have also started,” said Chimbga.

The demolitions are said to have conjured memories of the 2005 Operation Murambatsvina which left 700 000 people displaced across the country.

Justice Mathonsi’s ruling on October 9 castigated the September demolitions, quoting section 74 of the Constitution:  no person may be evicted from their home or have their home demolished without any order made after considering all relevant circumstances.

Mathonsi took a swipe at local authorities, saying that they have allowed illegal settlement to take root at the expense not only of the settlers but also organised urban planning and public health. He said local authorities are “now waking up and by force and power demolishing structures without regard to the law and human dignity“.

His decision has been applauded and although the demolitions have ceased for now, residents are yet to know whether they will still have a roof over their heads in the months to come.

Sally Nyakanyanga is a journalist in Zimbabwe.

SA: Pistorius jailed for five years for Steenkamp killing

Oscar Pistorius in the Pretoria High Court on October 21 2014. (Gallo)
Oscar Pistorius in the Pretoria High Court on October 21 2014. (Gallo)

A South African judge on Tuesday sentenced Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius to five years in prison for the negligent killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day last year.

At the culmination of one of the most watched murder trials in recent history, the 27-year-old disabled sprinter was led away by police officers to holding cells beneath the courtroom in Pretoria.

Pistorius wiped his eyes as Judge Thokozile Masipa handed down the prison sentence for culpable homicide.

Masipa – only the second black woman to rise to South Africa’s bench – said the sentence had to be “fair and just to society and to the accused”.

There was no immediate reaction from members of the athlete’s family, or from relatives of Steenkamp, a 29-year-old law graduate and model.

“Justice was served,” said Dup De Bruyn, the lawyer for the Steenkamp family. He told reporters the judge had given “the right sentence”.

Pistorius’ defence lawyer Barry Roux said he expected the jailed athlete to serve only 10 months of the five-year sentence behind bars, and the remainder under house arrest.

However, South Africa’s state prosecuting authority disputed this opinion, saying Pistorius was likely to serve at least a third of his sentence in prison – effectively 20 months.

On a separate firearms charge for which Pistorius was also found guilty, Masipa gave him a three-year suspended sentence.

Steenkamp was killed almost instantly when Pistorius fired four shots through a bathroom door at his luxury Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year, having mistaken her for an intruder.

The athlete, known as ‘Blade Runner’ because of his carbon-fibre prosthetics, became one of the biggest names in world athletics at the London 2012 Olympics when he reached the semifinals of the 400m against able-bodied athletes.

Rare white rhino dies in Kenya, pushing breed close to extinction

A picture taken on October 2004 shows a northern white rhinoceros named Fatu (C) at the Dvur Kralove zoo, east Bohemia. (Pic: AFP)
A picture taken on October 2004 shows a northern white rhinoceros named Fatu (C) at the Dvur Kralove zoo, east Bohemia. (Pic: AFP)

One of the last northern white rhinos on the planet has died in a reserve in Kenya, leaving the sub-species on the verge of extinction, experts said on Saturday.

The male, called Suni, “was probably the last male capable of breeding”, according to Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic, where the rhino was born in 1980.

There are only six of the very rare rhinos left, having been hunted by poachers in central and east Africa for their horns, which are highly prized for traditional Chinese medicine.

The Czech zoo is the only one in the world to have succeeded in breeding the sub-species in captivity.

Suni – who is thought to have died from natural causes in the Ol Pejeta reserve – was one of two males and two females from Dvur Kralove zoo reintroduced into the wild in Kenya in 2009, in an operation dubbed “the last chance of survival”.

It was hoped that the females’ hormones would normalise in the wild, but even attempts at assisted conception failed.

“One can always believe in miracles but everything leads us to believe that hope they would reproduce naturally has gone,” the zoo’s spokesperson Jana Mysliveckova told AFP.

Sperm from the males born at Dvur Kralove has been conserved at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin.

Another pair of the rhinos, too old to reproduce, live at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego in the United States, with another aged female remaining at Dvur Kralove, close to the border with Poland.

“The number of rhinos killed by poachers has increased incredibly in the past few years,” Mysliveckova said. “According to some scenarios, there will be no rhinos left in the wild in Africa in 10 years or so.”