Youths shun ZNA recruitment

Sources within the ZNA told The Zimbabwean this week that the army’s recruitment drives in the region had failed to attract the youth, despite being highly advertised in the in the government-controlled media at least a month before their scheduled dates.

“Very few youths from the Matabeleland region have heeded our calls for them to try their luck in our recruitment exercises. It seems that they are just not interested in the army. The worst is Matabeleland North province and the whole thing seems to be political,” said a member of the ZNA’s public relations department, which does the recruitment.

Army sources revealed that only five people turned up for the latest recruitment exercise in Matabeleland North, which ran for a week towards the end of last month.

Youths told The Zimbabwean that they were not interested in working for the partisan ZNA, and instead preferred to cross the border into neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa to look for better paying opportunities.

Most of the youths said that they were still angry with Mugabe for the Gukurahundi atrocities, which saw his North-Korean-trained Fifth Brigade murder an estimated 20,000 civilians in the 1980s.

“Most of us here know what Mugabe did to our parents and I would rather die in a foreign country than fight to keep him in power. The army also does not pay well,” said Nkanyiso Mloyi of Kezi.  Junior soldiers earn around Z$13 million a month and most youths said they would rather do menial jobs in neighbouring countries for more money.

Army spokesman, Simon Tsatsi, confirmed that the ZNA had failed to get a meaningful number of applicants from region, but quickly linked that to a communication breakdown between his department and the target market.

“I think we are missing the point somewhere. We are already reviewing our approach,” he said. – Bayethe Zitha