HARARE – A group of placard-waving war veterans marched to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Munhumutapa offices in Harare on Tuesday morning.
The group left a petition addressed to Mnangagwa, in which they voiced concerns that some of them had not been vetted in order to receive gratuities paid out to nearly 33,000 other war veterans starting in in November 1997.
They also demanded that Victor Matemadanda, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association and also Deputy Minister of Defence and War Veterans Affairs be removed from both positions.
Matemadanda was accused of being an impostor who never fought in Zimbabwe’s war of Independence in the 1970s. Instead, the marchers claimed he had been a taxi driver in Zambia when others were executing the war effort.
Matemadanda is locked in a bitter fight for the control of the war veterans’ association with its chairman, Christopher Mutsvangwa, who accuses the Gokwe Central legislator of plotting to unseat him.
Speculation was rife that Mutsvangwa may have had a hand in the march. Unusually, the protesters were left unmolested by Zimbabwe’s paranoid security forces.
Some of the placards the protesters carried stated: “38 Years is Long Enough; Deal With Corruption Listening President, Cde President Honour Statutory Instrument 280-281[1997]; Are We Still Together Cde President?”
