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ABSTRACT
This article deploys the concept of kujingirisa to unpack the lived experiences of university students during a period of unprecedented socio-economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe. I particularly examine the existential challenges faced by the students and how they creatively navigated everyday constraints on campus. Central to this article are the multiple ways through which students negotiated and navigated the country’s multi-layered crisis. I argue that the concept of kujingirisa as a form of social navigation enables us to understand students’ agency, resourcefulness and multiple ways of getting by and making do which made everyday life on campus possible. Through and in-depth examination of university students’ everyday life on campus, the article shows how particular forms of being and subjectivities emerge at the intersection of the tactics and strategies devised by students to get by on campus. Findings revealed that for students’ tactics of survival to succeed, one had to be socially embedded on and off campus. As such, students with strong social capital were able to tactically manoeuvre the vagaries of the crisis. Interestingly, some of the strategies devised by the students bordered on the margins of legality and formality.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For a detailed analysis of the impact of Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes see Mlambo (Citation1993).
2. Some of the factors that accelerated the economic collapse in Zimbabwe include the controversial land reform programme which led to the imposition of targeted economic sanctions against the country, the payment of war veterans gratuities amounting to Z $ 50 000 and the participation of the country in the DRC war which had colossal un budgeted costs with serious economic consequences.
3. The label GB in Zimbabwe is associated with the much hated youth militia trained under the national youth service to do violence for and on behalf of ZANUPF. Students also associated GBs to the huge green toilet flies.
4. Mufakose is a high density residential area located some 50 kilometers from the UZ campus.
7. Kujingirisa refers to youth street lingo which depicts multiple ways of getting by amid constraining socio-economic challenges-these were largely informal and sometimes illicit.
8. For detailed information about the money burning business during the hyperinflationary crisis see Gukurume (Citation2015).
9. The term UBA refers to University Bachelors Association which on campus connotes all male university students.
10. NetOne is a government owned telecommunication company, but was used by students as a metaphor to show how students would forego meals to save their meagre incomes.
11. Sadza is a thick porridge made from maize meal and is the staple food in Zimbabwe.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Simbarashe Gukurume
Simbarashe Gukurume is a lecturer in the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Great Zimbabwe University. He holds an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Cape Town. His current research interests focuses on ethnography of youth and informality, Chinese migrant traders, Pentecostalism and student politics.