Mliswa calls on Sibanda, Mutsvangwa and other dzakutsaku to unite - to what end and purpose! By Patrick Guramatunhu.

Themba Mliswa, a former Zanu PF MP who was booted out of the party last year and has since been smarting from the experience, called on war vets are now under the cosh from President Mugabe, some have been booted out of the party already, to unite.

 

"He (President Mugabe) is against the war veterans, he is also equally pushing away Mnangagwa. He went on to blast war veterans leader (Christopher) Mutsvangwa for petty issues,” Mliswa told Daily News.

"This is the time for war veterans to come together. This is the time they must unite. What happened to Mujuru is what is happening to Mnangagwa."

 

What morons like Mliswa have failed to understand all these years is that renegade war vets, like Jabulani Sibanda, Chris Mutsvangwa, Joseph Chinotimba and many others of the same cut committed the cardinal sin by accepting to be the regime’s storm troopers in the ruthless fight to maintain Zanu PF’s de facto one party state.

 

Soon after independence Zanu PF had used its militant but brainless Women’s League and Youth League members as it storm troopers. Who can forget the “Yokozuna”, as many people called the big bell and even larger behinds Women’s League members after the Japanese wrestler of the time, who terrorized the people, forcing them to attend Zanu PF meetings and rallies in the 1980s and 1990s!

 

By the late 1990s the truth finally dawned on the Zanu PF Women’s and Youth league members that President Mugabe was just using them to do his dirty work and would never delivery on his promise of economic prosperity for all. Contrary to President Mugabe’s promise of economic prosperity, Zimbabwe’s economy was sinking fast; the women and youths were tired of chasing a mirage. The party needed to recruit new storm troopers and fast or its no regime change dream was doomed!

 

The country’s worsening economic situation affected everyone including the war vets, another segment of society who had been sold to President Mugabe’s scientific socialism as the cure to all the nation’s problems. They had a rude awakening when they found themselves out of work, nowhere to live and nothing to eat. They anger turned into outrage when they realized that President Mugabe and his cronies and their families were growing fat and rich wallowing in luxury and comfort they could not ever dream of.

 

Not one to miss an opportunity, President Mugabe turned the war vet’s anger to serve his own selfish needs; he offered them a bribe many did not refuse and made the down payment in the unbudgeted very generous cash lump payments to war vets in 1997/8.  This reckless spending forced the Z$ to suffered its largest devaluation and marked the start of the slippery slope of hyper-inflation which peaked at 500 billion per cent in 2008 and forcing the regime to scrap Z$. What Mugabe got back from the war vets was a commitment to fight for no regime change.

 

What the war vets failed to understand is the economic hardships affected everyone and not just them and therefore the solution should be one addressing the root causes of the economic slump – mismanagement, corruption, etc. The war vets who not only accepted the cash bribe from Mugabe but went one step further to support the regime’s corrupt and tyrannical rule, even after they were warned this was a bribe and that it would not solve the nation’s economic problems but would in fact exacerbate them, showed just how shallow they are.

 

No self-respecting war vet would agree to be used to deny the people their freedom and basic rights; this was contrary to what the war of independence was about. Sadly not all war vets have morals and self-respect and the few who do were silenced with the mindless and very vocal mob.

 

President Mugabe rolled out the war vets to stop regime change at all cost. They spear headed the white farm invasions, ostensibly to “take back our ancestral land” but this was a fig leave the real purpose was deny the ordinary Zimbabweans their right to a meaning vote to stop regime change. The farm invasions flared up towards and elections and spread to encompass urban and rural areas – areas with no white farms.

 

Militant war vets like Jabulani Sibanda became very popular with every Zanu PF Chef who wanted opposition supporters and ordinary people whipped into line. He has since admitted that he and his war vet thugs were fighting “to stop the regime change agenda”.

 

War vets like Sibanda and Mutsvangwa represent the rump of the war vets who sold their war-time values of fighting for freedom, liberty, justice, human rights and human dignity of all our people. They sold their very souls to President Mugabe for pittance - $50 000 cash that lost its value before they got the money and a promise of a share of the looted wealth including the former white owned farms which many will never get.

 

 So when a half-wit like Themba Mliswa says these corrupt war vets must unite, one has to ask they are to unite behind whom, Mnangagwa or Mujuru? And to unite to what end and purpose; a Mnangagwa or Mujuru led one-party dictatorship?

 

We fought the war of independence to end white colonial oppression and not to replace it with another oppressive regardless who if leading it; that is the message stupid war vets like Sibanda and Mutsvangwa failed to understand all these last 35 years.

 

The many freedom fighters who died to liberate this country have been turning in the graves at seeing how idiots like Sibanda have allowed themselves to be used to oppress our people for selfish gain. They are freedom fighters in that they too fought in the liberation war but they are nothing but the modern day Abel Muzorewa’s dzakutsaku sell-outs! But like all tyrants President Mugabe is thanking Sibanda, Mutsvangwa and all the other dzakutsaku in his usual way, with a savage kick in the teeth.

 

One hopes that these idiots will now finally get the message – we want a free and democratic Zimbabwe and not a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship! We do not want them to unite and form yet another generation of dzakutsaku!