ZNA in secret recruitment drive

A similar attempt last year was stopped after it emerged that the army had embarked on a recruitment drive without cabinet or budgetary approval.

Sources told The Zimbabwean this week that, instead of advertising new vacancies, the ZNA recruitment office, on orders from the army bosses, had identified point officers who were secretively spreading word of the hiring exercise.

“Officers, especially those in middle management and some who have been assigned to go on leave to their home areas to monitor the election mood, are asking their relatives and friends to tell youths aged between 18 and 22 to go to their provinces of origin for screening,” said a military source.

“The whole thing is being done below the radar. It seems our bosses don’t want the recruitment drive to be publicised. The secrecy around it indicates that the government has not approved the move,” he added. This paper has established that recruit screening took place at Inkomo Barracks just outside Harare on April 18, at Battlefields in Kwekwe on April 22 and 2 Brigade April 22-23. The army personnel office will soon move to Magunje, Mutoko and Llewellyn Barracks in Bulawayo before spreading to the remaining provinces.

Hundreds of young job seekers turned up at the centres where screening has already taken place, with potential recruits being made to carry out timed road runs as part of the initial vetting stage. Most of them slept in the barracks before being screened the following day.

A good number were turned away because they would have turned 23 by the time the training starts, while others failed to run the specified distance in the required time.

One recruit, who will turn 23 in August and so was turned away, alleged that there was much favouritism in the recruitment exercise.

“After successfully completing the road run, we were asked all sorts of questions. They wanted to know who had told us that they were recruiting, whether we had relatives in the army and also asked political questions such as which party we belong to,” he said.

Another army source said training is due to start on 6 June, with each of the 10 provinces expected to recruit 150 cadets. “This time around, no recruits will be trained at ZMA (Zimbabwe Military Academy in Gweru). What I have gathered is that the junior officers will be recruited as general hands, not battle soldiers. It is not clear why the army would want to recruit so many general hands,” said the middle management officer.

Even though training is expected to commence in June, he added, it was likely that drills and orientation could be delayed to next year despite the cadets being given force numbers and uniforms and carrying out normal duties from the barracks.

This, he said, would be done to avoid adhering to civil service regulations relating to the Defence Forces. He speculated that the new soldiers would be used to campaign for President Robert Mugabe and as a public relations strategy to aid the Zanu (PF) campaign ahead of the elections.

It was not immediately clear if Treasury had authorised the recruitment, as repeated efforts to get a comment from Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, were fruitless. However, he is on record saying government is broke, and a ban on new posts is still in place, with the exception of nurses who were recently given the nod to fill vacant positions.

Government has approached the United Nations to fund the possible poll, but there is haggling in the coalition government over whether the world body’s team tasked to assess the prevailing political environment as a funding precondition should have unrestricted access to institutions and individuals or not.

There was no money to fund the recent referendum, forcing government to borrow $85 million from Old Mutual and the National Social Security Authority, and the UN has been asked to help fund the elections – expected to gobble $132 million.

There is speculation among military sources that ZNA could circumvent government staffing procedures by internally funding the new posts.

Army spokesperson Alfios Makotore could neither deny nor confirm the recruitment exercise. “Go back to the person who gave you the story and he will tell you if the army never had money to recruit soldiers,” he said.

The army has been accused of systematically campaigning for Zanu (PF) in the past, while military generals have openly expressed their allegiance to the party. It is reported to own 10 percent in one of the leading diamond mining companies in the Marange fields, Anjin Investments, with the remaining 90 percent controlled by the Chinese army, even though there is a private enterprise face to it.