This paper examines the deployment of government spies, informers and state security agents on a university campus in Zimbabwe. The paper reveals the social and political implications this has for knowledge production in and beyond the university space. The university campus is presented as a social and political space in which political struggles between two main political parties, the ZANU-PF and the MDC-T, are fought. I argue that surveillance is not only an intractable part of the rhythms of everyday life on university campus, but also a very specific form of ‘bio-power’, ‘bio-politics’ and violence meant to discipline the university system: students, lecturers and the ways in which knowledge is produced and sedimented. The paper demonstrates how the habitualisation of surveillance and fear of surveillance generate what Foucault refers to as a ‘panopticon’ and produces ‘self-censorship’ among students and staff. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted with students and staff at the University of Zimbabwe, this paper sheds new light by showing how surveillance not only impacts relationships and self/collective behaviours, but to some extent the meaning of the university itself. This study used a qualitative methodology and more particularly, participant observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with students and staff at the University of Zimbabwe.