A GROUP of war veterans yesterday formed a splinter group,
accusing Zanu PF, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the Zimbabwe National
Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) of failing the country through
corruption and fanning political violence.
The war veterans, led by Wilbert Sadomba, a former
Christopher Mutsvangwa-led ZNLWVA secretary for education, said they had now
formed a new apolitical war veterans association, the Zimbabwe Liberation
Platform (ZLP).
The original ZLP was the brainchid of the late liberation war
stalwart, Wilfred Mhanda, whose Chimurenga name was Dzinashe Machingura.
“This is what we have realised that as long as we remain
subservient to a political party, it has got its own ideologies, its own
leadership that if we try to be critical, it has to take the practices and
culture of that political party and we won’t be able to actually play our role
as an overseer of the liberation objectives,” Sadomba said.
He was accompanied by Abraham Tsikwa, Karen Kazingizi,
Patrick Makombe and Abel Marimo.
The war veterans, most of them who played a huge role under
the ZNLWVA in the ouster of the late former President Robert Mugabe to pave way
for Mnangagwa, also accused the incumbent of monopolising the liberation war
into a party project for personal gain.
They argued that the liberation struggle did not belong to
Zanu PF and, therefore, it was wrong for ZNLWVA to be an arm of a political
party.
The new outfit said Zanu PF had been hijacked by people who
don’t understand the ethos of the liberation struggle, a group of people who
are in their posts because of Mugabe’s political gamesmanship to retain power.
They also cast aspersions on Mnangagwa’s liberation war
credentials, claiming that when he was released from jail, he went straight to
study law, and not joint the liberation struggle.
He was brought back into the fold by Mugabe, the
ex-fighters claimed.
Sadomba said it was time for the nation to be brave and
speak out against corruption and challenge bad things regardless of who was
behind them, saying Mutsvangwa’s ZNLWVA had failed.
“We did not fight the war so that we can have political
violence or corruption. We fought for democracy and to get out of oppression in
the hands of Ian Smith, but not to continue under the same in a Zanu PF
government. The Zanu PF we knew during the war is not the same we know now,” he
said.
Sadomba added that war veterans operating under the
confines of Zanu PF cannot stand up against the rot that has rocked the
revolutionary party, referring to the alleged missing of US$15 billion diamond
revenue and US$3 million Command Agriculture funds.
Kazingizi said real war veterans had been sidelined and
replaced by opportunists.
She also lifted the lid on Mnangagwa’s liberation war
credentials.
“Cde Emmerson was taken out of jail, according to the
history I know, and when he left prison, he did not go to the war. He went to
study law. After finishing law, he was taken by Mugabe after the former
President had removed all the real comrades. The people who had chosen Mugabe
to lead the war at the Mgagao declaration, he had finished them all, and
replaced them with newcomers,” Kazingizi said.
In 2008, war veterans led a violent and bloody Zanu PF
campaign against the opposition MDC after the late MDC leader and presidential
candidate Morgan Tsvangirai had won the first round of presidential elections.
Kazingizi said they now wanted to exorcise the ghost of
violence by stepping out of Zanu PF.
“If a true war veteran did that (beat up people in violent
election campaigns), they must come forward and confess, because during the
war, we saw them being shot if they killed unarmed civilians,” she said.
The war veterans said they were working to rebrand
themselves.
The ZLP leaders said political violence and corruption have
become so entrenched under the watch of Zanu PF, in the process dividing the
nation and leaving a trail of poverty and empty national coffers, which are
being looted by a few. Newsday
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