Universities transform mining towns

Feature Vincent Gono
“WE used to enjoy life at the mine. Everything was available at a subsidised rate. We could get beer, meat and even women (prostitutes) and pay after a fortnight when we get paid. We would also enjoy various sporting activities but now all those things are part of history and had it not been for Great Zimbabwe University, this compound could have been forgotten by now and we could be probably be living in the bundu,” said 70-year-old Mr Arimanyongo Phiri in a quivering voice with a Malawian tone that he has failed to shed off even after more than half a century in the country.

He is old, lean, frail but smart with a long-sleeved shirt that is tucked in and hardly fails to put on a tie. He has now turned into selling an assortment of traditional herbs for a living while students who would have failed to secure accommodation at the university residential area give him an extra penny for rentals as he is leasing out the three-roomed mine house that used to accommodate his family.

Such has been the case with other families in the mining towns in the country after the closure of the firms for different reasons. Most of the mining towns and centres became mere shadows of their former selves as they became devoid of economic and social activities.

Most of them began looking grim, very unattractive, uncared for and unkempt. They quickly resembled haunted houses with shattered window panes, peeling off paints and in some cases collapsing roofs as well as what remains of the structures while thickets fast emerged, closing up the roads that used to be so well serviced.

The little life that is left there has been of poverty stricken families that are holding on to the houses in most cases for their unpaid gratuities which God only knows when they are going to get the money while some have no rural homes owing to them being of Malawian origin.

Most of the abandoned mining towns and centres in the country look just the same. They are in a deplorable state and to imagine that they were once life supporting and economically strategic business entities seems unthinkable.

Some of them have grown into forests and what remains are just the vestiges of the mine structures’ walls as thieves have helped themselves to most of the valuables.
But it takes a resourceful mind to realise that the structures of the mine especially those that are still in shape can be used to establish another mine different from the one that runs out of the minerals or whose mineral can wake up the next day with little or no value on the market.

Yes, from the desolate mine whose mineral ran out years ago some universities have seen a good platform to establishing a mine in the mind, a mine whose resources will never run out and a mine that will never close, let alone be deserted for as long as procreation remains legal.

They were aided by the fact that some of the mine structures were still so much in shape and it required very little attention to turn them into a conducive learning environment for university students thereby bringing education to the communities’ doorsteps.

The model where deserted mine structures were transformed into a higher learning centre started with Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo Province and it was started by the university vice chancellor Professor Rungano Zvobgo where he and his administration have turned the de-industrialising Masvingo city and a disused Mashava which was an asbestos mining town into university centres.

Although a ground breaking ceremony was done at the university site close to Great Zimbabwe Monuments almost a decade ago, the university has been struggling to put together the US$300 million that is required for the project and has been putting stop gap measures to ensure learning continues.

The university, one of the fastest growing in the country, takes pride in being the pacesetter in the multi-campus university model and boasts of six campuses where the majority are in Masvingo while another one is in Mashava.

The university’s idea of multi-campus system was also taken up by Midlands State University and is taking shape in another deserted mining town of Zvishavane in the Midlands Province which was the major asbestos producer in the country before it was dogged by a lot of controversies that threw its operations into a quagmire.

The two State universities have managed with so much ease to re-awaken the otherwise dead economic and social activity in the mining towns, giving them another lease of life that is surely going to see them adding to the development discourse of the country at large.

Great Zimbabwe University has since transformed the country’s oldest town of Masvingo into a university town probably taking a leaf from international universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, New York, Birmingham and Cape Town universities where much of the activities border around the university.

But it is in Mashava that the university has re-awakened the mining town where it bought and turned the abandoned mining facilities into classroom blocks, dining halls, administration blocks, library and computer laboratories as well as recreational facilities while the many residential structures have been renovated and turned into fitting student hostels.

Mashava is therefore no longer the old and abandoned mining town it was after the closure of Gaths Mine. It is now a university centre where activity is now abound.
Although analogies can be drawn from the way the two competing universities are developing the mining towns, Zvishavane was not in the same state as Mashava as there was still a lot of activity even after the closure of Shabanie Mashaba Mines (SMM).

Professor Zvobgo told Sunday News in an interview that the university aimed at being a 21st century university of choice where students were supposed to enjoy a campus environment that was not restrictive to freedom.

He said the idea behind the multi-campus system was to take education to the people, adding that Mashava was identified as one area where the university could exploit its potential for growth while re-awakening the fast forgotten mining town that was suffering a tottering demise.

He said he had managed to transform the university from a glorified high school to a competent university that now boasts of about 350 foreign students from Namibia, DRC, South Sudan and many other African countries.

“The university has become one of choice. We have received 9 000 applicants for Semester One Part One students and we managed to admit only 3 600 applicants while the rest are waiting metaphorically outside the gate. We have managed to transform the university from a glorified high school to the university that it now is today and a lot of people are realising that we are producing scholarly students and distinguished academics.

“In terms of numbers we come second to the Midlands State University,” said Vice-Chancellor Professor Zvobgo. Professor Zvobgo said the University had managed to grow at a fast rate over the last three years due to resourceful thinking and sheer determination by everyone at the University.

“We have been innovative in the face of financial challenges. We are fully cognisant of the fact that we have to build at the Main Campus site at Great Zimbabwe Monuments but there is no money for that right now. What we have done is to implement mitigation measures by buying and renovating buildings in and around the city for teaching and learning,” said Professor Zvobgo.

And during his familiarisation tour of the university, Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Prof Jonathan Moyo said he had been very skeptical of the multi-campus system but he was impressed with what he saw at GZU.

He said of the Mashava Campus that it was “the most exciting campus and an amazing place,” adding that he now believes that a disused mine can be a good place to have a university.
The Minister further described the Herbert Chitepo Law School in Masvingo town as a first class facility.