Academic Freedom and Human Rights in Zimbabwe

Abstract

negative impact on academic freedom and has significantly reduced the scope for free inquiry. The high level of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe has also put scholars at risk. These endangered minds have been tortured, killed, or maimed for their courage to speak truth to power. A significant number of Zimbabwean scholars have gone into exile for their own safety. This process has affected the country's universities profoundly some of its best intellectual capital is now in exile. For the past 30 years, Zimbabwe had been a recognized center of academic excellence in Africa, but since the crisis began, some of the universities have closed or are operating below capacity. Over the past 15 years, the government of Zimbabwe has actively put in place legislation that seeks to limit the country's academic space for free inquiry. One of the most draconian of this raft of laws in the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which, inter alia, makes it very difficult for scholars to carry out field research. This is especially true in the rural Zimbabwean countryside, which President Robert Mugabe and his party, the Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front (ZANU-PF), consider to be its core political constituency. University professors and their research assistants continue to be tortured and harassed and even killed for attempting to collect primary data, on any issue, in Zimbabwe. University researchers on