The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) won by a huge margin in the Student Representative Council (SRC) elections at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) held last week.
ZINASU claimed 12 seats out of the 15 vacant seats.
ZINASU, which is believed to be sympathetic to opposition political parties, won the positions of president, vice-president, secretary-general, treasurer-general, minister of academic affairs, minister of food, health and students’ welfare, minister of information and publicity, minister of legal and constitutional affairs, and minister of sports and recreation.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union (ZICOSU), which is allegedly linked to ZANU PF, won only three positions. In two of those positions, they will be working with ZINASU as the positions have two ministers.
Speaking in an interview with CITE, ZINASU President Benon Ncube said the election process was conducted in a peaceable manner though the announcement of the results was delayed without justification. Said Ncube:
The campaigning process and everything went well, we didn’t have any cases of violence unlike what usually happens at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ).
At NST we didn’t have any act of violence towards the students or the candidates and the election went well.
The problem only came when the results were supposed to be announced on Monday and there was a delay.
We believe it was influenced by the fact that the win surprised the administration, they never expected ZINASU to win in an online election.
So that was a problem because they were now withholding the official announcement of results but then there was nothing that was going to reverse that decision because the agents had already confirmed results and we knew everything.