By MATTHEW DLIWAYO|Disgruntled war veterans and collaborators of the liberation struggle that brought Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, have accused parliamentarians and President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of using them like condoms who they ‘throw away after the elections’.
During an explosive consultative meeting by the parliamentary portfolio committee on Defense and War Veterans at a packed Kwekwe Theatre on Thursday last week, the war veterans bemoaned their living conditions and said the Government has little regard for their lives despite the fact that they liberated the country from the jaws of the brutish British colonial regime.
“You (politicians) are fond of telling lies and 40 years after independence, nothing tangible has happened to our welfare as war collaborators and veterans of the second Chimurenga. We are honorable for nothing, only needed when there are elections and we are used like condoms; that should end”, fumed a war veteran from the auditorium.
The war veterans said they wanted the Government to assist them in payment of school fees for their children and called for tax exemption with some arguing that they cannot pay for the soil they fought for. The war vets argued that the government had peverted from the founding objectives of the struggle and has now turned a blind eye on them.
The former liberators said corruption was now rife in the country, claiming that the ex-fighters were capable of fighting corruption.
“As war vets, we had hoped that the government (would) honor its obligation as prescribed by the law. Statutory Instrument 280 and 281 of 1997, clearly states that we should be recognized and it has the amount clearly mentioned that should be received by the war vets”,
One of the war vets only identified as Cde Mabuda said.
