The rise of students' lumpenism and the fall of students' intelligentsia: the historical role of UNZA students in the liberation struggle of southern Africa

In the 1970s and 80s it was fashionable for students at UNZA to read Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels' theory of class struggle and the revolution.

During those days, the term lumpen proletariat figured prominently in the students' vocabulary. It was used to describe the illiterate, backwards workers and peasants who were more interested in drinking and other pursuits and were unconscious of their role in the class struggle.

Over the years, the role which UNZA students played in fighting political oppression and bureaucratic intransigence has been narrated in some historical quarters. Students learning at higher institutions like UNZA provided a voice for a voiceless citizenry that could not speak on a number of issues effecting society.

In the early 1970s for instance, the University of Zambia Students’ Union (UNZASU) organised a march to the French Embassy in Lusaka, to protest against the French government’s decision to supply sophisticated military weapons, including Mirage fighter jets, to the apartheid regime of South Africa