Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu) won resoundingly 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.
They 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.
Zimbabwe Congress of Students Union (Zicosu) won only three positions, in two of those positions they will be working with Zinasu as the positions have two ministers.
Speaking to CITE, Zinasu President Benon Ncube said the election process went well as they did not encounter any form of violence.
“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 Nust we didn’t have any act of violence towards the students or the candidates and the election went well,” said Ncube.
He, however, said they encountered a challenge when it came to the announcement of results.
“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,” said Ncube.
Ncube said they feared that a third hand would tamper with the results.
“We were just waiting for the process that had been agreed on that on Monday there is going to be an official announcement and we had fears that there is now going to be a third hand on issues of student politics because if it is just student politics, no one can stop the announcement of results because the vice chancellor is the vice chancellor for the students and if someone comes in and tries to convince him otherwise it means that person is no longer a student but someone beyond the student arena who is trying to control results,” he said.
He added, “We were waiting, all things were planned just in case they decide to reverse anything and we were going to deal with it decisively because the students knew what they voted for so they came up with allegations that there was a rigging process and that is very wrong because this is an online election which is run by the administration itself, so there is no way they can say there was rigging.
“Fortunately enough, the results have been announced and we are glad that the vice chancellor has kept his word, although they were delayed we are glad that we did not have to go to any trouble,” said Ncube.
Nust Director of Communication and Marketing, Thabani Mpofu, had not responded to questions sent to him at the time of publishing the article.
