Street Graduation

Despite Zimbabwe having one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, years of economic mismanagement and sanctions led to an inevitable financial crisis. In 2013, the government promised to create two million jobs, yet the crisis only seemed to get worse over time. In 2016 this led a youth group, unable to find jobs or live a dignified life, to protest unemployment in Zimbabwe, which has one of the highest rates in Africa.

At the height of the crisis, most people with undergraduate, postgraduate, and even doctorate degrees found themselves unemployed, or under-employed. To afford the basics of life, often they were working at jobs outside of the scope of their degrees — jobs such as airtime, vegetable, or newspaper vendors (see: PRINCIPLE: Focus on basic needs).

To make actions memorable, they presented their personal struggles as a political issue.

Graduates had traditionally used their graduation ceremonies to stage protests as an effort to express their frustration. Some would smuggle placards and flash them during ceremony, causing disruptions. But these ceremonial protests proved to be ad-hoc and far apart, thus largely ineffective when used as stand-alone tactics.

In 2016, a group of youth organized themselves under the banner unemployed graduates. Drawing on learnings from previous efforts, they realized that they needed to focus on memorable actions sustained over a longer period of time so as to actually and directly influence public discourse. To make actions memorable, they presented their personal struggles as a political issue (see: PRINCIPLE: Make the personal political).

As street vendors, the group began selling vegetables wearing their graduation gowns. Soon, many other unemployed graduates joined forces, not only because the tactic was easy to organize independently (see: PRINCIPLE: Use organizing strategies that scale), but also because they felt more safe in doing so collectively. Graduates working as public transport drivers (kombi in Zimbabwean lingo; matatu or daladala in Swahili) started going about their daily operations wearing the regalia (see: PRINCIPLE: Expose inequality with a viral gesture).

With widespread participation and creativity, actions began drawing significant attention. The group seized this momentum to become more public. They organized street soccer games in different neighbourhoods across Harare also wearing their regalia. In Zimbabwe, and more generally in the Global South, school kids often play soccer in the streets during term break, which indicates that they are “off” or have nothing to do. By doing so, the unemployed graduates were sending out a similar message (see: PRINCIPLE: Know your cultural terrain).

The simplicity, creativity, and consistency of their message was effective in influencing public discourse as they had intended, which put the state on the defensive. Ironically, the regime responded to this humour by arresting the unemployed graduates and charging them with the criminal offence of ”public nuisance” (see: PRINCIPLE: Use humour to undermine authority). However, the court found them not guilty and ordered their release.