A recent news report by women in Zimbabwe’s Student Christian Movement say that poverty is so bad that many fellow students are resorting to prostitution to survive.
The power sharing group between Zanu-PF and the MDC has not brought the long hoped-for relief to students who are finding every-day life a battle to survive.
Zimbabwe’s economic travails are well known world-wide, where many are starving and millions have fled the country in the wake of inflation that hit 231 million percent at one point.
"The only thing I can say is that there is food on the shelves and we can have our workshops as the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe without being intimidated," says Matsiliso Moyo, a recent teaching graduate. "But to those students who are still at college, things are not so rosy. They are expected to pay tuition fees which are six times their parents' salaries."
Moyo's testimony is part of a collection published recently by the SCMZ. The booklet titled Students' Experiences in Times of Governance Crisis contains descriptions of arrests and intimidation by state security agents and stories of students struggling through their studies on tiny budgets.
Melissa Green shares how she and others have turned to sex for money with older men in order to supplement their limited funds. "It's quite a painful experience to see beautiful girls selling their bodies as a means of survival." Green laments in her contribution.
Green goes onto lament "That's the only way we can survive because most of us come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I used to do it myself, but thank God for SCMZ and my Christian background, I can't do that anymore," says the Ecumenical News International.
(For the full story, please go to http://www.christiancentury.org).