African students agitate

The All African Student Union (AASU, secretariat in Dar es Salaam ) has set up a volunteer corps to work toward the liberation and reconstruction of those parts of the continent still under colonial or white minority rule. To further the aims of the new corps, AASU has developed close ties with various African freedom movements and the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

The continent-wide student body has also drawn up a number of projects in different regions of Africa which are designed to help students who want to contribute their share to social and economic development at the community level. But the community efforts are not to be divorced from the long-range goal of freeing the continent as a whole.

The new volunteer corps would assist the freedom movements, especially in the newly liberated areas, in the tasks of social reconstruction and rehabilitation. "We feel that this will give us ample opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the actual conditions in the zones where freedom fighters are in control," AASU spokesman Mxolisi Mgxashe explained.

The new emphasis on "practical experience rather than rhetorical slogans" within the AASU is a result of the growing awareness on the part of many African students that certain complex problems of development and democracy still confront African societies after more than a decade of independence.

The majority of the African peoples have yet to taste the fruits of independence, the AASU frankly recognises, and the "root cause" in a distressing number of cases has been the series of military coups that have overthrown elected civilian governments. "The future of Africa can only be assured", the AASU spokesman stated, "through the dynamic involvement of the young in the common search for solutions to the continent's problems."