Fungi Kwaramba • 24 July 2016 2:45PM • 24 comments
HARARE - Last Thursday’s dramatic decision by restless war veterans to cut ties with President Robert Mugabe has spooked the warring governing Zanu PF, amid growing fears that the fall-out could trigger mass arrests and detentions of leaders of the former freedom fighters.
And as expected, Mugabe’s panicking government came out guns blazing yesterday, warning ominously that it would investigate the liberation struggle fighters’ “traitorous and treasonous” move with a view to “punishing” them.
Well-placed sources who also spoke to the Daily News on Sunday yesterday confirmed that plans were afoot by authorities to throw the kitchen sink at the aging war veterans to “not just quell their rebellion, but to send a powerful message that traitorous and treasonous actions will be brutally dealt with”.
“You must see this in reality as a declaration of war by a reserve army that is governed by the Defence Act.
“That is how serious all this is, and it is the reason why you have seen the government reacting as robustly, appropriately so, as it has done through Retired Brigadier-General Walter Tapfumaneyi (ministry of War Veterans permanent secretary).
“For that reason, we expect serious consequences to befall all those disloyal war veterans who are behind these traitorous and treasonous actions in the next few days,” one of the sources said, hinting that war veterans’ leader Christopher Mutsvangwa and his close allies were in trouble.
Lapdog State media predictably went into overdrive yesterday, condemning the war veterans without reporting in any meaningful detail what the former freedom fighters had said on Thursday and what their real grievances with Mugabe are.
This was after government-controlled newspapers and their sister radio and television stations studiously ignored the mega story when it broke out, with journalists working in those media houses saying their bosses had until late Friday been “frantically looking for direction” from their handlers on how to deal with the blockbuster news.
In his belated reaction, Tapfumaneyi claimed that the former freedom fighters who attended the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) meeting in Harare on Thursday which had savaged Mugabe to no end had allegedly distanced themselves from the “traitorous and treasonous” communiqué that was released after the gathering.
Ominously, Tapfumaneyi was also quoted saying that the government was investigating the matter “with a view to punishing those behind the traitorous communiqué”.
“Government, therefore, dismisses the said traitorous so-called communiqué which is treasonable in the constitutional democracy that Zimbabwe is, with utter disdain and all the contempt that it deserves.
“While multi-agency investigations are under way to establish its origins, authorship, ownership and purpose which will bring all associated with it to justice, the ministry urges all patriotic veterans of the liberation struggle to remain loyal to His Excellency the president and to the party, to remain disciplined and principled while at the same time being wary of the divisive machinations of Zimbabwe’s detractors,” he said.
On his part, a more measured War Veterans minister, Retired Colonel Tshinga Dube, said former freedom fighters should engage Mugabe for a redress of any grievances that they had, without adopting a confrontational approach — adding that a militant approach would act as a disservice to the war veterans and their association.
“I want to know what this means and I will engage the war veterans to reason together. As long as they say they are Zanu PF, we say if they have any grievances they must come through the right channels,” he said, also dispelling any notion that his ministry would not work with Mutsvangwa and his ZNLWVA executive.
“As far as we are concerned we are working on the welfare of the war veterans. Even if he (Mutsvangwa) is expelled from the party, as long as he is a war veteran it is his constitutional right that we should look after his welfare.
“It does not mean that if you have been expelled from the party now we cannot execute your welfare rights. We have not been given a right to stop looking at them as war veterans,” he said, adding that it was up to the ZNLWVA, and not his ministry, to call for a congress to elect a new leadership for war veterans.
Zanu PF sources who spoke to the Daily News on Sunday yesterday said the decision by the war veterans to serve divorce papers on Mugabe had allegedly shaken both the ruling party and the increasingly frail nonagenarian.
“I’m worried because the support base for the president is getting smaller with this development. It would appear that the only firm support he still has in the party is from the women’s league and a few mafikizolos (Johnny-come-latelies),” one disaffected party bigwig said.
Former Zanu PF chairman for Mashonaland West, Temba Mliswa, said the women’s league’s support for the president counted for little as this was a result of First Lady Grace Mugabe being in charge of that organ — whom he described as “having no real credibility within politics anyway”.
“The biggest mistake that Mugabe made was allowing the purge (expulsion of Mujuru and her allies) to happen, thus reducing the potency of the ideology of Zanu PF and the historical gravitas of the liberation struggle. In the purges Mugabe lost advisors like Didymus Mutasa, people who would stand with him through trying times,” he added.
Analysts also say war veterans have been one of Mugabe’s strongest pillars of support — playing particularly significant roles to keep the nonagenarian on the throne in the hotly-disputed 2000 and 2008 elections which were both marred by serious violence and the murder of hundreds of opposition supporters.
But on Thursday they said Mugabe’s continued stay in power was now a stumbling block to the country’s development, declaring that he would also be “a hard-sell” if he contested the watershed 2018 presidential elections.
“We are saying this country will only go up when Mugabe steps aside because his management is no longer respected by anyone, including his own ministers,” war veterans’ political commissar, Francis Nhando, told journalists during a media briefing in Harare.
“If he announces his retirement date now, the economy will improve because there is nobody who will invest his money where the future is uncertain. Nobody will lend money to a 92-year-old and if he does not step aside, 2018 will be the most difficult year to campaign for us as war veterans.
“How do you campaign for someone you do not like and who does not like you either? The relationship between us as war veterans and the president has broken down, he and the party don’t like us anymore,” he added.
“The most important thing that we must see is that everybody cannot be wrong. The church is speaking, the informal sector is speaking, civil servants are speaking and now his vanguard the war veterans have spoken,” academic and scholar, Pedzisai Ruhanya, told the Daily News on Sunday yesterday.
“Mugabe must speak now. People want to see the regeneration of the economy and yet the president has remained silent in face of corruption in parastatals. The very people who Mugabe is protecting are being affected by the crisis at hand and yet Mugabe has no solution but to answer protests with protests,” he added.
Kent University law lecturer Alex Magaisa said Mugabe had every reason to be afraid now as he had lost his “last line of defence”.
“He is obviously getting more and more isolated from his old constituency of liberation leaders. The G40 plan is coming up well as they have managed to isolate Mugabe by systematically decimating the old guard.
“This is what the G40 has always desired. Although Mugabe is a master politician, he does not seem to have grasped that the G40 is a project aimed at isolating him and removing his entire generation altogether,” Magaisa said.
The fall-out between Mugabe and his storm troopers also comes as the 92-year-old is battling swelling public anger against him and Zanu PF, which has seen strikes and riots hurting the already dying economy further.
Earlier this month teachers, nurses and doctors went on strike after the government failed to pay them their June salaries on time, and there are growing doubts about the capacity of the cash-strapped government to pay civil servants their July salaries on time.