ZANU PF accused of planning to pay fake war veterans as 2023 polls nears

Norton Independent Member of Parliament, Temba Mliswa says the vetting and inclusion of ‘new group of war veterans and collaborators’ is a pure scam and a ploy to pay fake war veterans.

He says the ruling party fell out with the real war veterans who have been agitating for their money and the party has decided to fix them by creating a new group of war veterans adding that there is no sincerity in this.

“If the party was sincere about compensating War Veterans, outside politics, it should have done so with those vetted in 1997.

“So far it has failed to do so and yet purports to now seek to compensate an additional group. The very people who vetted them are not veterans themselves,” he says.

Meanwhile, the ZANU PF government recently announced plans to pay one-off gratuities and monthly pensions to a new batch of 160,000 war veterans, war collaborators and ex-political prisoners which it claims to have missed out during the first round of compensation in 1997.

However, concerns have been raised regarding the timing of the announcement, just months ahead of general elections, and some are viewing the move as vote-buying.

In 1997, when the government responded to months of protests, and paid out unbudgeted lump sums to nearly 50,000 war veterans leading to the collapse of the Zimdollar which since then, has never recovered.

Zwnews