HARARE A splinter group of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) has a started lobbying for more compensation for taking part in the 1970s liberation war that led to the countrys independence in 1980. (Pictured: Members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War
The group last week placed adverts in newspapers to launch what it dubbed the Heal Our Wounds Campaign, claiming that over 27 000 comrades were massacred during the liberation war by the Rhodesian security forces.
The former fighters group said the government and the countrys political leadership had done nothing to ensure that parents, children and relatives of fallen freedom fighters were compensated for loss of their loved ones.
The Mau-Mau in Kenya was compensated why not ZANLA and ZIPRA? asked the war veterans in their advert placed in a local weekly newspaper yesterday.
One Fred Mutanda, also a war veteran, sponsors the ex-combatants group. Sources said the splinter veterans group is also strongly aligned to Joseph Chinotimba, who led farm invasions. Chinotimba has been fighting to seize control of the ZNLWVA.
Some of the Rhodesian forces who perpetrated the atrocities are now Cabinet ministers and policy advisors today, the full-page advert read in part.
The advert, which is attributed to the war veterans coordinating committee, and with no logo also asks who is healing the widows, widowers and children of the fallen heroes who are living in abject poverty.
In November 1997 President Robert Mugabe bowed to similar pressure from the former fighters and paid off Z$50 000 plus monthly pensions of $2 000 each to the more than 50 000 war veterans triggering the crash of the Zimbabwe dollar on the stock exchange.
The payouts were not budgeted and the economy responded with a bang, resulting in the infamous Black Friday crash of 14 November 1997 when the Zimbabwe dollar plunged on a single day from $14 against the United States greenback to $26 to the US unit.
The secondary contagion effect was a sharp 40 percent crash of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. The stock market lost 46 percent of the value of shares as investors scrambled to dump the Zimbabwe dollar.
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