When the gun gets angry…

26 Nov, 2017 - 00:11 0 Views
When the gun gets angry…

The Sunday Mail

Brig-Gen (Rtd) Asher Tapfumaneyi
This is a momentous stage of our national development. We have had 37 years under which President Mugabe ruled the country. He is credited for a lot of people-centred developments that sought to restore the dignity of the people of Zimbabwe coming out of nearly 100 years of colonialism.his is a momentous stage of our national development.

Look at land reform, indigenisation policies, affirmative action of the early 1980s and infrastructure development.

In 1980, there was universal adult suffrage. The age of majority then was 21 years, but Government reduced this to 18.

I remember coming out of the bush. We were asked to put our guns under a tree and went to vote. There was no voters’ roll or fingerprint-taking. We just put a cross on the ballot paper, picked our guns and went back into the bush.

We have moved to a point where we have a voters’ roll, adhere to Sadc principles and guidelines for democratic elections and are now using biometric methods of identification to eliminate fraudulent voting, among other issues.

So, I give credit to President Mugabe and his team for that.

War veterans have played a crucial role in bringing about the dispensation unfolding now. They also played a crucial role in bringing about Independence.

Later, we will discuss what I think went wrong. Where did we lose it? And that is the gist of the entire G40-Lacoste divide.

It was about ensuring Zanu-PF, the original union between Zapu and Zanu, succeeds itself; not to be succeeded by something that calls itself Zanu-PF but is not Zanu-PF in terms of its ideology, its way of doing things and all the other principles that define Zanu-PF.

The mandate of the Ministry of Welfare Services for War Veterans, Collaborators, former Political Detainees and Restrictees derives from the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

The ministry has existed since April 2015. It is the most political ministry of Government as the community we look after is a major factor in Zimbabwe’s politics.

This mandate is derived from the Constitution of Zimbabwe whose preamble exalts and venerates war veterans – the dead and living – for their role in the struggles to liberate Zimbabwe. This recognition goes back to the First Chimurenga.

Section 3 of the Constitution obligates the State to recognise the rights of veterans of the liberation struggle as a principle of good governance.

In other words, without such recognition, Zimbabwe cannot be said to be governed properly.

Calculations show that if the youngest war veterans were 16-years-old in 1980, the last handful of veterans will still be in the picture in 2054.

So, we don’t have time to squabble and waste. We must live the life we fought for and bequeath values for which a lot of us fought. And these are the things that resulted in war veterans being recognised as an institution.

Section 23 of the Constitution defines who a war veteran is, and this simply refers to one who fought, assisted and was detained for political reasons during the liberation struggle.

That Section also obligates the State and all its institutions to recognise, honour, respect and provide means of economic empowerment for veterans.

Section 84 then elevates that recognition and respect to fundamental, inalienably entrenched human rights.

Chapter 4 cannot be changed, not even a full stop can be altered without going to a national referendum.

Apart from the Constitution, there are Acts of Parliament which the ministry administers. These four Acts are the War Veterans Act; the Ex-Detainees Act; the War Victims Compensation Act and the National Heroes Act.

However, we are amalgamating the War Veterans Act and the Ex-Detainees Act into one called Veterans of the Liberation Struggle, Rights and Benefits Act.

We want to categorise war veterans, and this proposed new law will incorporate war collaborators who are presently not covered at law. It will also include non-combatant cadres as well as nationalists who conceived the war, created the armies and then armed them.

Here, non-combatant cadres are former refugees.

When we got to war, either in Mozambique or Botswana, we went to a refugee camp either run by Zanu or Zapu, and lived a military life.

There was disease and hunger in the refugee camps.

Some who were of school-going age are not even accounted for. Their parents think they are coming back even after over 37 years.

So, such people were excluded.

There are about 3 400 surviving war veterans.

We estimate that the chimbwindos and mujibhas could be about 200 000-plus, and that widows are in the region of 12 000.

War victims number 17 000. However, about 22 000 files are incomplete. And ex-detainees are now between 7 000 and 8 000 while nationalists are roughly 500.

In addition, we have 20 000 non-combatant cadres.

An army tanker blocks the main road to Parliament building in Harare to prevent members of the public from passing through.

An army tanker blocks the main road to Parliament building in Harare to prevent members of the public from passing through.

The war veteran was marginalised on the welfare side because of the nation’s competing needs as the cake dwindled. That is quite understandable; we could not monopolise the entire cake.

The other area of marginalisation was political.

I now come to where we are, the background to this.

When the ministry was created, war veterans – the fighters – were the most united group of veterans of the liberation struggle.

Other groups were divided, and this goes back to the problem of factionalism in Zanu-PF.

I put it down to a problem where people in Zanu-PF learnt to gather delegates for the next congress in between congresses.

Soon after congress people hit the ground to create the next electoral college for the next congress. People with various interplays of ambition.

The way it was done was to disturb the provincial chairpersons and replace him/her with their own. They would shake the structures as provincial and district structures made up an electoral college at congress.

Those were seriously destabilised in between congresses, and affiliate organisations like the war veterans’ became divided in a similar way.

Until February 2015, war veterans had remained upright and resilient.

We saw it coming, but there was nothing we could do about it.

From the first Chiweshe rally, some veterans announced that they were rebelling against the Christopher Mutsvangwa administration.

Yes, there were issues we were aware of, and these could have been addressed. But splitting the war veterans’ association was a deliberate move.

Prior to that, there had been talk in the party about war veterans not being “a special group; politics commands the gun”.

So, the divisions among war veterans were not accidental.

Whoever designed G40 and its strategy to destroy Zanu-PF from within (wanted to divide war veterans). And when I talk of war veterans, I am referring to even serving soldiers, the generals, who are in and out of the army.

Conceptually, it also includes the military, even all soldiers recruited after 1980, because the army had a civic education programme that began around 1988 and has groomed every soldier to be like the war veteran who was at Tembwe in 1976.

That’s why there is discipline in the army.

It is because of this ethos instilled in the average soldier in the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.

So, the first move was to split war veterans so that when people stood up and said the First Lady must be President, a band of war veterans would accede to it.

That is where Mandi Chimene and group come in.

G40 created its own war veterans, and went on to eliminate other war veterans who were not compliant with their schemes and idea of the First Lady ascending to become President.

That is the gist of this conflict and the place of war veterans in it.

Then the next move was to remove Mutsvangwa from the Ministry (of Welfare Services for War Veterans).

War veterans became leaderless.

I must admit that I do not agree with all tactics (Cde Mutsvangwa and others) used (like forging alliances with Rhodesians, inviting the British and Americans, inviting Zapu, civil society and even announcing publicly that they wanted Zanu-PF out of power in 2018).

However, in terms of what we were facing as a fraternity, we saw the same demons.

I think purely on principle, Zanu-PF cannot be corrected by people who are outside of it, but within.

I wish to briefly highlight theoretical aspects of Zanu-PF ideologies; noble facts that were now being used to oppress the opinion of the military in Zanu-PF politics.

There is the song, “Nzira Dzemasoja”, Mao’s eight points of attention, the fish-in-water Concept and others.

Somehow, the latter expression was now being used to mean that the war veterans factor must act properly because “it is in the water that is Zanu-PF”.

Zanu-PF is not the water that we talked about during the liberation     struggle. We were talking about

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Zanu-PF being the fish in the water – the masses in Zimbabwe.

I admit, politics creates the gun. It is also the one that funds the gun. General Chiwenga did not buy a tank; it was bought by politics.

But that adage only remains as long as the politics that created us does not engage in excesses and acts in agreement with the gun.

We started this together. As we grew, we were being groomed to be what we are. It was done with the same purpose as politics.

But when politics starts engaging in excesses, corruption; people are arrested and the Vice-President goes to get them out of a police station; people are scolded left, right and centre; the First Lady seizes power and elevates herself even above the Vice-Presidents, and shouts slogans like “pamberi neni Amai venyu”…

I have been in Zanu-PF since the age of 16, and have never heard someone say “pamberi neni”.

So, the gun is entitled to get angry.

This is how General Chiwenga, the other generals, the entire army and war veterans then caused a conversation.

It was not a coup.

It was a conversation punctuated by arms of war, which then led to the President’s resignation.

There is a General called Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general of the 19th Century who coined the phrase, “War is the continuation of politics by other means”.

Let the debate begin of what the army here did and this idea of politics controlling the gun. Let this issue be debated. I am putting it on the table.

I am privy to a lot of things that (may not be in the public domain).

During the talks that led to the inclusive Government, one of the major demands was security sector reform.

At the time, it was coming from our detractors and the opposition.

However, this time “security sector reform” came from State House. It was being pushed from State House. Everytime the President travelled, he was fed lies.

Thus the country began to be run on rumours even though we have multiple intelligence services that could have confirmed or refuted the rumours that caused instability.

Zimbabwe is peaceful, and that resides in the loyalty of the Generals.

When things happened in a manner that was difficult to understand, because of our loyalty and commitment to die for the President, we ended up saying maybe it was not him, but people around him.

Up to now, I do not think many of the things that happened are attributable to the President himself.

Those who were saying he had been captured might have been telling the truth. I really think (Mrs Mugabe) had that leverage.

So, this operation called “Operation Restore Legacy” was about managing a situation. It was still a conversation, even with tanks on the streets and the Air Force circling.

The Constitution of Zimbabwe exalts and venerates war veterans.

The constitution of Zanu-PF, in its preamble, also exalts and venerates us and recognises that as long as we live, we shall be the foundation on which the party continues to build itself.

That is in the constitution of Zanu-PF, but some warped logic of the G40 cabal saw us being marginalised to a point where we no longer had an opinion on what Zanu-PF was doing.

I am glad that now the Zanu-PF Central Committee has decided to give war veterans a more prominent place.

It said going forward, war veterans should occupy places of influence in the party and Government, depending on their qualifications.

Even in the march of Saturday, war veterans had their part of gathering people and engaging with others to make an expression which then led to the President resigning.

The cry of war veterans has always been: “Why are we guests at our own party. This thing called Zanu-PF is ours together. How can we be an ‘affiliate’?”

So, we need to be mainstreamed in the party so that where decisions are made across the structures of the party, we are there. This is a weakness which resulted in G40 succeeding to throw away veterans from the party. It is because the association is an “affiliate”.

Once they decapitated and divided it, no one was listening to us anymore.

All categories of veterans of the liberation struggle form a population that is quite big, perhaps a million.

Hondo yakanga ine matare and hierarchy yayo. Hatingaite madofo tese tese ekuti amongst those tiers, then we fail to find a succession plan, yekuti who comes next and we take time to groom that person in preparation for a particular time when they will take over.

What had happened was that that whole ladder, that whole tier system of the leadership of the liberation struggle had been eliminated from the succession system.

Where have you ever heard of a situation where a person is poisoned, he almost dies, and when he mentions that he had been poisoned, a rally is held to tell him that “you must not talk about that”?

That was cynical, sadistic.

Perhaps those dimensions happened in isolated places, and many people did not see the complete picture.

Then the factor war veteran was the only one that could stop it. That’s why we were targeted. I am now happy that it’s a closed chapter.

But I also pray that we give President Mugabe his respect. We are not vindictive and arrogant in victory. He deserves respect in the history of this country.

He deserves to be looked after.

We do not want to work out of emotion or anger, and end up deleting the good things that have happened.

 

Brigadier-General (Retired) Asher Tapfumaneyi is the Secretary for Welfare Services for War Veterans, Collaborators, Former Political Detainees and Restrictees. He was speaking to The Sunday Mail News Editor Morris Mkwate and Chief Reporter Kuda Bwititi in Harare last week

 

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