ZNLWVA leadership must introspect

TODAY is Heroes Day, a day set aside to remember and celebrate the lives of the country’s heroic sons and daughters, living and dead, who were prepared to pay the ultimate price for the cause of our independence and democracy.

This year once again finds the nation at a seeming crossroads, with no love lost between Zanu-PF, the behemoth party of the revolution formed from the building blocks of Zanu (PF) and PF Zapu, and the leadership of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), the association formed to oversee the welfare of the men and women who led the charge for independence. The question then becomes, why? Why is there apparent discord between Zanu-PF the party which led and leads the gun, and war veterans who, as a reserve force, are supposed to be led by the same?

We do not have to go back too far in history to get an answer. In fact we need only revert to Wednesday last week when the ZNLWVA leadership convened a Press conference in Harare at which they cast aspersions at President Mugabe and redefined the MDC as a loyal opposition championing their interests!

We are sure there must have been tremors at the National Heroes Acre, the provincial shrines and the marked and unmarked graves bearing the remains of Zimbabwe’s finest sons and daughters in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and the Zimbabwean countryside as they all collectively turned in their graves!

For those who may have missed it, this is what ZNLWVA leader Mr Christopher Mutsvangwa had to say about the MDC-T, the Trojan Horse Westerners formed in a bid to sabotage the logical transformation of our independence from the political to the economic dimension.

‘‘We may have had differences with the MDC in the past, but when they came on board to write the Constitution with us together and they are in Parliament, they are behaving as a loyal opposition to Zimbabwe, and most of the time actually are championing the welfare of war veterans. We have no particular misgivings about them.’’

In that one sentence Mr Mutsvangwa laid bare the problems afflicting the ZNLWVA, which has since led to a clear distinction between the association leadership and the generality of the ZNLWVA membership of which President Mugabe is patron. Surely we wonder from which planet Mr Mutsvangwa descended to classify the MDC-T as a loyal opposition given the treacherous history of the party and the objectives behind its formation. MDC-T was formed by the Westminster Foundation as a knee-jerk reaction to Government’s decision to embark on the fasttrack land reform programme.

MDC-T campaigned for and was used as justification by Westerners for the imposition of the ruinous illegal economic sanctions regime that cost the economy over $42 billion in revenue in addition to contracting the economy by a factor of over 40 percent.

And to this day, MDC-T is still on the path of destructive engagement as shown by the party’s futile attempts to shut down the economy in a bid to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.

Surprisingly despite all this, Mr Mutsvangwa also had the temerity to describe the proposed opposition coalition as an expression of democracy, despite overwhelming evidence that the main opposition and fringe political parties are being rallied to get together to challenge Zanu-PF by Western powers, even against the better judgment of the opposition membership as evidenced by the intra-party violence that afflicted the MDC-T in Bulawayo.

If these are the characteristics of a loyal opposition, then we believe given his predilection for verbosity, Mr Mutsvangwa no longer understands simple words like ‘loyal’, which probably explains why he wants to throw the lot of the ZNLWVA with a treacherous opposition.

This is not what the thousands of Zimbabwean men, women and children, who perished at the hands of Rhodesian fire died for.

We hope Mr Mutsvangwa and his cohorts will use the occasion of Heroes Day to introspect and realise what ZNLWVA is supposed to stand for.