Student protest and state reaction in colonial Rhodesia: the 1973 Chimukwembe student demonstration at the university of Rhodesia

On 7 August 1973, African students at the University of Rhodesia staged the most violent demonstration in the pre‐independence history of the University. The state's reaction to this demonstration was unprecedented; over 150 students were arrested and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to nine months and, thereafter, were served with banning orders restricting them from coming within twenty kilometres of the only university in the country for three years. University students had demonstrated in the past but they had never been as violent as they were in 1973. Although the government had always kept a close watch on African student activities on the campus, it had never employed such drastic sanctions against the students before. This paper traces the development of the African students’ protests beginning 27 July 1973 to the fateful Chimukwembe demonstration of 7 August 1973 and attempts to explain why the students’ protest developed into an anti‐white and anti‐state demonstration. It also seeks to understand why government responded to African student protests as harshly as it did. It argues that the militant students’ actions in 1973 as well as the state's drastic reaction were conditioned by the growing polarisation within the country between the African majority and the white minority, the heightened political awareness of the African student body and the determination of the state to crush any African opposition at a time when the Rhodesian government was facing mounting political, economic and military threats to its continued existence. This study of the 1973 Chimukwembe demonstration thus hopes to contribute towards an understanding of the forces that shaped the dynamics of the interaction of national struggle and student activism during the turbulent years of the last decade of settler colonialism in Rhodesia.