Monday 11 October 2010

COMMUNITIES POINT PRESS STATEMENT 12/10/2010: JULIUS SAI MUTYAMBIZI-DEWA

COMMUNITIES POINT PRESS STATEMENT 12/10/2010: JULIUS SAI MUTYAMBIZI-DEWA




Communities Point expresses total disappointment with the failure to recognise the late Pamela Tungamirayi as a national hero. Such an illustrious daughter of the nation who sacrificed for the just and noble cause to liberate her country should get the recognition without questions. Not only does the failure to recognise her role in the liberation struggle display arrogance but it is a humiliation to former liberation fighters like her and a further dent on Zimbabwe’s march towards the recognition of women’s roles in the development of the country. ZANU PF is making two statements; that real heroes of the struggle, the combatants who were in the front but who refused to be used against the same father and mother who sheltered and hid them from enemy forces and against the same chimbwido and mujibha who cooked for them and served as their intelligence, do not matter and that women in general do not deserve recognition for their sacrifices.

Throughout its 30 year tenure, ZANU PF has used ex-combatants with scorn and humiliation. In 1980, ZANU PF refused ex-fighters to play any roles in the army arguing that they were not qualified despite the fact that they had brought independence to the country. In 1982 ZANU PF created “Gukurahundi” from young ex-combatants and ingrained their minds with a hate agenda and turned them into savages that would go on to commit genocide in Matabeleland. In the same year ZANU PF expelled most of the ex-ZIPRA combatants from the Zimbabwe National Army and accused them of being “dissidents” a term that actually meant they were small time armed robbers who ambushed rural buses and growth point general dealers for beer and money.

Humiliated, most them went to live as second class residents in apartheid South Africa. In the same year ZANU PF arrested ex-ZIPRA Supremos Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku and stripped them of their military ranks. They were unlawfully kept in prison despite being acquitted by a Court of Law. Ironically their continued imprisonment was by using the same emergency laws that had been used by Ian Smith and which the liberation fighters had fought so hard to abolish.

Around the same year they gave ex-combatants pittances as demobilisation packages and abandoned them. For the next 25 years they were left struggling, scavenging for food on the streets of Harare and Bulawayo. Some of them reverted to being thieves and prostitutes as the political elite enjoyed themselves in the independence ex-combatants blood and sacrifices had brought. They abandoned Chimoyo, Mulungushi, Tembwe, Nyadzonya and the surviving victims of those massacres were relocated to a bushy area in Ruwa where they were abandoned and left to rot. They buried Chihombe Madala, not at Heroes Acre but somewhere in his village, and they never conferred him hero status to this day. They tortured Lookout Masuku and Dabengwa and refused to declare Lookout Masuku a national hero.

They went behind the back and used their positions to entice helpless ex-women cadres into having affairs with them and that included widowed wives of ex-combatants and even in adulterous relationship with the destitute wives of living ex-combatants. ZANU PF humiliated ex-combatants and reduced them to beggars who had to sing, kill or lie to be rewarded. They forced Dzinashe Machingura into exile, they barred Augustine Chihuri from joining the Zimbabwe National Army and he had to enter the police force through his own merit.

They barred Chenjerai Hunzvi from practising medicine, and for more than 3 years refused to give war veterans any form of help insisting that the US$300.00 they had been given in 1982 should have lasted them a lifetime. The war veterans as they were now called had to be supported by Zimbabweans and their leading supporters were ZimRights and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. So defined was the support that ZANU PF saw the possibility of a labour party that was backed by veterans of the liberation struggle. In budging to the war veterans demands ZANU PF took money from workers in order to divide workers and war veterans. ZANU PF again humiliated the war veterans because again they were being told that the party’s elite was better than them.

They did not say all ministers should go for at least a year without their perks, salaries etc in solidarity with the comrades they had abandoned. This is the policy of ZANU PF they treat war veterans such as Pamela Tungamirayi with scorn. They were left homeless and abandoned in Chitungwiza and it was my own father Leonard Mutyambizi and his uncle Councillor Chinamhora, who worked hard to make sure war veterans got houses in Zengeza 4, Zengeza 5 and later Units L and M in Chitungwiza something most of them remember and treasure to this day.

The humiliation of Pamela Tungamirayi is consistent with ZANU PF policy, which recognises only those “war veterans” who sell their souls to the whims of the elite. They are turned into savages that quickly abandon their principles leading them into being the pathetic tormentors of the same people who have stood by them all the time and whom they did much to liberate. Just look at the history of ministerial posts and one will be able to conclude how many were veterans of the liberation struggle? We again see the importance of taking the decision-making process on who is and who is not a hero from the ever-blundering ZANU PF politburo which is self serving, to a more pronounced, patriotic neutral body which will serve the interests of the country.



CHAIRMAN: Julius Sai MUTYAMBIZI-DEWA, 07529705413 or 07401182271 or mutyambizidewa@yahoo.co.uk

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