ZIMBABWEANS have been described as a people who still live under bondage despite the sacrifices made by heroes of the Chimurenga was during the struggle for independence.
This was said yesterday by analysts and opposition
political parties who told NewsDay that the situation in the country did not
exhibit characteristics of an independent country.
Speaking ahead of today’s Heroes’ Day commemorations, MDC
Alliance secretary-general Charlton Hwende said the obtaining resembled what
pushed the liberation fighters to take up arms against the colonial regime.
“The current generation of young people should learn
lessons from the bravery, sacrifice and ideological clarity of the gallant
youth of the 1970s.
“Forty years after independence, we are still to achieve
the important one-man-one-vote objective of the liberation war. Elections under
successive Zanu PF governments continue to be rigged, while many citizens are
denied the right to vote in independent Zimbabwe.
“In the post-colonial State, the majority of black
Zimbabweans are still excluded economically. Land and mineral resources are
still owned by a minority population of blacks directly linked to the ruling
party and its political elite,” Hwende said.
“The post-colonial regime has adopted and perfected the
oppressive laws used by the pre-independence government. This has resulted in
targeted arrests and abduction of opposition party members and perceived
anti-government activists, as well as the closure of democratic space.”
Hwende said the country’s youthful population had the duty
to complete the liberation struggle and free themselves from oppression.
“While the liberation struggle was about taking up arms,
the current national democratic struggle is about occupying the streets and
demanding free and fair elections in the spirit of citizens’ convergence for
change,” Hwende said.
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a grouping of civic society
organisations said the sacrifices made by liberation war heroes were being
undermined by continued militarisation of key State institutions and closure of
democratic space.
“The current situation in Zimbabwe, which has been
characterised by militarisation of key State institutions, closure of the
democratic space, persecution of dissenting voices, weaponisation of the
Judiciary, gross corruption and plunder of national resources while the
majority wallow in abject poverty and a constitutional crisis, among other
vices, serves to betray the aspirations of the heroes who went to war to fight
colonialism,” the coalition spokesperson Marvellous Khumalo said.
Khumalo said criminalisation of civil society work, enactment
of draconian legislation and the push towards a one-party State was betraying
the aspirations of liberation fighters.
In a statement, Zanu PF said it was because of the
sacrifices of the liberation fighters that Zimbabwean were enjoying freedoms in
the country.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa was saluted for honouring the
First and Second Chimurenga heroes, especially the recent erection of the Mbuya
Nehanda statue in Harare.
War veterans chairman Chris Mutsvangwa said though things
had taken a downturn under the late former President Robert Mugabe, the country
was now moving forward under Mnangagwa.
“The President has since taken a firm grip of the national
finance system as of June 2020. There was the domestication of the national
currency by banning or husbanding those who moonlighted as private central
bankers, and in the dark process driving business and debilitating inflation,”
he said.
Mutsvangwa said under Mnangagwa, there had been economic
boom, especially in tobacco farming and the mining industries. Newsday
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