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For over two weeks since her arrival, Lilly Loveless’s research has been limited to going to the Archives, visiting Mountain Valley, interviewing the odd person now and again, and chatting with Dr Wiseman Lovemore, whose paper she keeps postponing reading. Nothing yet as systematic and as informed by the experiences of students as she had hoped. That is because of a strike at the University of Mimbo.

She has met, more times than she can recollect, hundreds of students carrying placards, palm fronds and tree branches, chanting the names of the VC and Reg, asking them to stop this and stop that or face the fire of their wrath. She has found the banners particularly rich in messages, ranging from: ‘UM: uncertain, unstable, unpredictable’ to ‘The VC Must Go’, through ‘Reg son of a Cam-no-go’; ‘Down with the Fence’; ‘They make the decisions, we live with the consequences’; ‘The Logic of Force Has Never Solved the Problem of Hunger’; ‘We want no Den of mediocrity’. She has also seen gendarmes and riot police chasing the students with water cannons, tear-gas, guns, batons and a burning desire to discipline and punish. And the students disperse only to reconstitute themselves again with songs of determination screaming in unison: ‘Enough is enough – We’ve been taken for granted for long enough’.

Dr Wiseman Lovemore and her landlady Desire give her regular updates on goings on. The strike has been provoked by the fence under construction. The VC, known as a daughter of the soil because she hails from the local ethnic group, started the construction of the controversial 8km fence round the university. The project, said to cost Mim$40 million, is heavily criticised by students and staff alike, who think it a mistaken priority.

The staff and students in their majority are categorical: In an institution where there are no lecture halls, no good library, no paper or machines to photocopy, where students are under taught and lecturers underpaid and disillusioned, a fence is hardly a priority project. If the VC was more of the conductor of the orchestra that she is supposed to be rather than seeking to play every single instrument in it as she does, she would certainly know the situation on the ground. Instead, there she is up in the clouds, insulated by ignorance and arrogance and fed with falsehood by spies and sycophants.

Wherever one meets a university lecturer, the complaint is the same: “Here at Puttkamerstown, professors are respected because they are knowledgeable and despised because they are poor”. They are said to be unable to afford a drink at bars where even taxi men and truck pushers are able to drink until they are drunk. At the market, their wives stand out because of how much they are ready to haggle until prices are dropped to affordable levels. “Our conditions have gone from bad to worse and from worse to the very worst,” they tell everyone who cares to listen.

One of those who criticised the building of the fence in a local newspaper – The Talking Drum – is a certain Muzunguland part-time lecturer with the Department of Political Science by the name of Dr Mukala-Satannie. His article entitled, ‘A Den of Mediocrity,’ so infuriated the VC that she immediately terminated his services of lecturer and barred him from entering the university campus.

The ‘Den of Mediocrity’ article is a courageous piece which Lilly Loveless isn’t sure she would write, even if she would die to defend Dr Mukala-Satannie’s right to express his opinions. “University of Mimbo,” he writes, “is fencing itself into a den of mediocrity, while complaining students and staff are miffed by the huge sum of money involved.” He calls on the university administration to “tear down this wall,” for staff and students “would rather see their scarce resources used to improve deplorable teaching and research facilities, stock the library with books and journals, and build toilets on campus.” He writes: “Isn’t it true that the fence is just a pretext for the Humpty Dumpty university administration to divert university funds to serve their personal needs and plethora of vested interests?” And concludes: “Some people adore academic excellence, others a den of mediocrity.”

Although not implicated in any way, Lilly Loveless has decided it’s too risky for her as a fellow Muzungulander to venture into the university in these circumstances. For the time being, she prefers, and has indeed been advised, to do her research from the safety of her rented accommodation in town, Mountain Valley, the Archives and other public places outside the university campus and immediate vicinity. She has also decided to avoid the company of Dr Mukala-Satannie, whom she met briefly at the CNN New Look, a popular bar at the University Junction, where he was surrounded by his student admirers, some university lecturers and journalists, all of whom he was servicing with free drinks and juicy excerpts from his column.

The VC is rumoured to have awarded the contract for the construction of the fence to herself through her brother as the front man. These allegations are doing their rounds in the newspapers, drinking places, restaurants and resting places.

In her defence the VC and her supporters argue that the 8km fence may not seem necessary, considering UM’s financial constraints, but the administration have been forced to embark swiftly on this project by “impudent encroachment by squatters” who have erected “hundreds of residential and commercial structures on University land.” This Lilly Loveless has read in the official statement the VC was obliged to release. The situation, she argues, could lead to explosions in future if left unresolved. Hence “the firm decision to put off the fire before too late.”

To others, Dr Wiseman Lovemore and Desire included, the VC has indulged in the fence because most of the houses and businesses that have mushroomed around the university are owned by people from different and distant ethnic groups perceived to be nothing but opportunists by the local group in whose ethnic territory the university is located. Politically, the VC is said to be particularly hostile to these ethnic others, because they tend to support the opposition parties against the ruling party – PIP, which she serves as member of the central committee and political bureau. She is quoted to have asked “all ethnic strangers” recently to abandon their silly belief in a one-person-one-vote democracy, for the outnumbered sons and daughters of the native soil “expect all strangers to listen and follow us to where we want,” especially as the bulk of the strangers “are mere plantation labourers, loafers and criminals.”

On this matter of the fence, Lilly Loveless cannot say for sure who was wrong and who was right. Truth in the affair has become like someone midway up a staircase. Those on the ground floor see him as being up, while those further up perceive him as someone down. The person’s basic position remains the same, but cannot be perceived in the same manner by everyone because they do not share the same standpoint.

The strike has grown in intensity. The VC was on radio this morning to explain her position yet again. She urged the public “not to inhale the rhetorical smoke coming out from misguided students and irresponsible, politically motivated lecturers”.

Lilly Loveless was lying in bed reading when she heard the news item on the VC. In the broadcast, the VC reaffirmed the university’s decision to construct a fence, arguing that it is a priority project and not a “white elephant” as detractors claim. The fence is one of the priority projects of the university, which also includes the construction of the second phase of laboratories, toilets, a football pitch and a monument in honour of President Longstay and his selfless service to excellence in higher education. The construction of the fence is aimed at forestalling the nefariousness of some of the university’s neighbours, who have been persistently and consistently altering university land. The fence is meant to tackle the encroachment problem once and for all. This action should forestall the inability of the university to expand in the future, due to the illegal occupation of its land.

On why the university has not planted boundary trees in lieu of a fence, the VC explains that this had been attempted two years ago, “but it proved futile due to the barbarism of animals and humans”. Implicitly referring to Dr Mukala-Satannie and his ‘Den of Mediocrity’ piece in The Talking Drum, she says that “no outsider has the right to dictate priorities to my university”. As a state-owned institution of higher learning, “we cannot afford to throw parochial and unverified criticisms on the government under which we work, and which pays us all the emoluments we receive.” She concluded her broadcast with a call to people to be less sentimental about the university and its deeds. She reassured the staff and students and urged them to have confidence in the university’s actions. “In a context of ruthless and unscrupulous politics in our university campus and lecture halls, the administration cannot sit back and watch vandals destroy what has taken the government and the taxpayers of Mimboland much sacrifice to build.”

Lilly Loveless is of the impression that no amount of reasoning and explaining suffices to convince ethnic others that the local ethnic elite are not simply using the fence as an excuse to settle political scores. They see the fence as the latest in a series of moves by the local ethnic elite who manage the university against ethnic others. It has been commonplace, they argue, for the VC and Reg to see ethnic other students and staff as working against them and doing everything to make their administration fail, in order to take over the running of the university themselves.

Yesterday she was spectator to a heated exchange Dr Wiseman Lovemore had with a colleague of his who accused him of hatching conspiracy theories to discredit the VC. “I just don’t see how you can write a love poem when your house is on fire”, Dr Wiseman Lovemore countered. In the course of the shouting match, Dr Wiseman Lovemore insisted that only his conspiracy logic would explain the mobilisation by the VC of “the dreaded Manawa juju of the local ethnic community to intimidate striking students.” The colleague described Dr Wiseman Lovemore as a coward who was using stubbornness to conceal weakness. “I know you are a weak man; I can read that from your eyes,” the colleague told him.

Passions are high on this matter of the fence, with protagonists behaving like street fighters in academic robes.

This was the first time Lilly Loveless was hearing of the “Manawa,” so when the quarrel was over and his colleague had left fuming, she asked Dr Wiseman Lovemore to tell her more on what actually happened.

“On Tuesday armed troops and the Manawa juju were invited to intimidate students into abandoning their strike. The idea was also to force the students to stop their agitation for the release of five journalism students detained by the police upon instigation by the university administration for propagating ‘falsehood.’ According to the charge, ‘the students were guilty of illegal production of the campus newspaper – La Voix du Place to Be – unauthorised broadcast over an opposition radio station of information internal to the University of Mimbo, publication of derogatory articles in radical newspapers intended to incite the general public against the University of Mimbo.’” In his fury Dr Wiseman Lovemore looked like a human shredding machine that would not hesitate to lend itself to the students to make mincemeat of the authorities.

As he speaks on, Lilly Loveless understands why he is so angry. “Some of the students have been arm twisted and threatened into betraying the cause by apologising and asking for leniency before a disciplinary board hastily constituted by the university administration keen to emphasise ulterior motives. In their pleas for leniency, the students claimed they had no intention of tarnishing the image of UM, and that their actions were instigated by politically motivated lecturers who disliked the VC and her ethnic elite at the helm of the institution. One of my colleagues, a close friend, has been falsely accused by these students of having urged them to burn the Reg’s official car. And I understand the students are still going to name further instigators. The question is, if these instigators are real, why name them piece–meal? Why …”

He spoke like someone who sensed danger coming.

“The VC and Reg are vindictive and vicious creatures. Raw, brutal power is their only strength, and woe betides whoever their bile settles on.”

Lilly Loveless decided to cool him down with a drink.

“Let me buy you a drink at Mountain Valley,” she suggested, tapping him lightly on the shoulder.

He smiled agreeably and followed her, his mind still absorbed by developments at the university. He must compose himself, for in Mimboland, one must never pretend to be dead, else people will bury you alive.

The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance.

“The university?” she asked.

He nodded. “They’ve invited the gendarmes again, to silence the students with torture.”

“Still no agreement then? I wonder why they can’t negotiate. Why can’t they iron out the wrinkles in their relationship?”

“None trusts the other.”

“What a shame.”