Against a backdrop of spiralling economic, political violence and institutional decline, Zimbabwean students from the late 1990s became deeply embedded in the country’s opposition party. This relationship was critical to understanding the importance of student activism during this period. The paper shows how because of their increasingly precarious circumstances, student leaders and rank-and-file activists turned to party structures in order to voice their opposition to the ruling party as well as to materially survive. Yet this dependence on the party ultimately undermined Zimbabwean student activists’ long held autonomous political authority and transformed their subjectivity as intellectuals. This paper argues that through this relationship Zimbabwean ‘political studenthood’ was reworked in ways that denuded them of political authority and eventually turned them into little more than party youth – young people whose value lay not in their ideas but in their ability cause disruption. These shifts, the paper argues, explains why Zimbabwe’s sixty-year tradition of student activism appeared to end after the end of the 2000s.