THE Zanu PF youth league has resolved to lobby the public service to only recruit party card-carrying members and graduates of the infamous Border Gezi programme as part of measures to counter demonstrations by disgruntled civil servants.
The call comes in the face of growing discontent in the
civil service over poor salaries and working conditions, with teachers and
nurses calling for a national shutdown on Monday to register their concerns.
The ruling party youths came short of labelling the
striking civil servants unpatriotic.
“That the party enjoins the government to prioritise the
employment of patriotic youths in order to curb the issues of industrial action
by retrogressive members of the public service,” Zanu PF youth secretary for
legal affairs Phinias Makombe said as he presented the resolutions of their
national youth conference held in Harare.
The ruling party youths also called for the resuscitation
of the controversial National Youth Service (NYS) programme, and ensure only
graduates of the abandoned programme are considered for employment in the civil
service.
The NYS programme, launched by the late Youth minister
Border Gezi in 2001, was introduced with the aim of drilling revolutionary and
patriotic ideologies into the country’s young citizens.
But Zanu PF was later accused of turning the graduates into
a paramilitary militia used to harass political opponents.
The programme came under a barrage of attacks with some
questioning why children of top government people never enrolled for the
programme, while others condemned it as a Zanu PF initiative to brainwash
youths.
“To urge the government to accelerate restitution of
compulsory national youth service and make a pre-qualification for enrolment
into tertiary education and abortion for employment onto the public sector,
with the purpose of inculcating values of patriotism, nationhood, voluntarisn,
national ethos and discipline,” the youths declared.
The NYS proposal comes when Zanu PF is accused of trying to
silence dissent by railroading controversial laws such as the Private Voluntary
Organisations Amendment Bill and the Patriotic Act.
“That the party should advocate for the enactment of the
Patriotic Act,” Makombe added.
The youths also resolved that President Emmerson Mnangagwa
be endorsed as the sole Zanu PF presidential candidate for the 2023 general
elections outside a party elective congress.
Mnangagwa, buoyed by the endorsement, told his supporters
that Zanu PF was unstoppable, and would cruise to victory in the 2023 general
elections.
“You are the vanguard of the party. You are the eyes and
ears of the party, stay vigilant…our party should remain safe in your hands. Go
and tell people that Zanu PF is unstoppable and we are going to win the
elections,” Mnangagwa said.
Meanwhile, a new youth league executive was elected at the
conference.
Masvingo youth chairperson and Gutu West MP John Paradza is
the new deputy youth secretary with Tendai Chiwetu as secretary for
administration, Tsungai Makumbe (political commissar) and Garikai Zonde
(secretary for finance) were among others elected to the youth executive.
Mnangagwa, as party leader, has the prerogative to handpick
the youth secretary to replace Tendai Chirau who had acted in that capacity
since November 2017. Newsday
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