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Veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle held a meeting with President Mugabe on Thursday, April 7 2016, where they tabled various concerns regarding their welfare, Zanu-pf’s ideology, threats to the revolutionary party and the safeguarding of the liberation war heritage. Our Senior Writer Lovemore Ranga Mataire (LRM) spoke to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Political Detainees and Restrictees Brigadier-General (Retired) Asher Walter Tapfumaneyi (AWT) on whether the meeting lived up to its billing.

LRM: The war veterans’ indaba with President Mugabe has come and gone. As the host ministry, do you think you achieved and articulated well what you set out on the agenda?

AWT: As the host ministry, I can say quite emphatically and with a lot of enthusiasm that the meeting was a resounding success. Yes, we had expectations. Our highest expectation was that we would emerge with all issues relevant to the welfare of war veterans, our perceptions on the state of the party and any other issues arising thereof fully tabled.

Our role was to put our opinion as a group on the table for the consideration of our Patron, who is also the President and the First Secretary of the party. When all was said and done, we expected our opinion to ensure that the President emerged stronger as the leader of the party and that the party itself become more united and refocused on its ideology. This meeting, precisely, achieved these and many more expectations of the community of war veterans.

LRM: You are aware that prior to this meeting, there was a lot of tension among war veterans. The war veterans themselves were feuding among themselves. How, as a ministry did you manage to unite these contending forces to speak with one voice at the meeting?

AWT: This was not a meeting for the War Veterans Association. Yes, as a ministry we do respect and recognise the association as the largest representative grouping of war veterans, which is also recognised under the War Veterans Act.

But, the War Veterans Association is a private voluntary body, which is registered with the Ministry of Social Welfare and, just like any other private organisation that has sympathies with ZANU PF’s ideology and policies, they are an affiliate of ZANU-PF. I can tell you, if that’s news, that I am not a member of the association. I never was.

It’s a matter of choice for any war veteran to join the association. We don’t become war veterans by virtue of being members of the association. Rather, we are war veterans by a fact of history because we participated in the liberation struggle. So this meeting was conceived at a level bigger and higher than the association. It was a call to all war veterans from all walks of life, even those who are not members of the association, to come and meet with their Patron because the President is the Patron of all war veterans, not the war veterans association alone.

LRM: Are you not contradicting with the recommendations passed at the meeting which emphatically stated that war veterans were not a mere affiliate but the custodians of the revolutionary party?

AWT: No, it’s not a contradiction at all. All fighters of the liberation war, our war of emancipation and our revolution, are recognised in the constitution of ZANU-PF in its preamble, for as long as they live, as “the custodians of the revolution and the bedrock upon which the ZANU- PF party will continue to build itself”. It’s explicit in the Constitution. So it’s not about the War Veterans Association, but about war veterans as a body, those who are not in the association and those who are its members.

LRM: Let’s go back to the issue of party ideology, which most observers said was not touched by the President in his report. How are these matters that he did not address going to be resolved?

AWT: I don’t think it’s correct, as what some sections of the media are saying, that the President skirted around certain issues. He heard all issues that were tabled, hot and sour, without any censorship. It was not necessary for him to announce a solution to each problem there in front of us. He is the Patron and the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces and he acts within his discretion and in his wisdom as a statesman. The important thing is that we managed to put our issues on the table and he only responded to a few of those issues but that doesn’t mean that he will ignore all the other issues raised.

In fact, the next step is that we are going to write a report of this meeting, which will contain all the issues he responded to and those he did not. And the structures of ZANU-PF are such that the President will then take that report to the Politburo, to the Central Committee, and then actions that are practicable are taken either from the perspective of ZANU-PF or Government.

So we don’t have any problem that the President did not address some of those issues in his speech. We know they will be resolved. None of the issues that the comrades raised are in any way outrageous or atrocious.

LRM: So there is a follow-up process to all the issues raised?

AWT: You know Lovemore, the President does not act alone. The President is part of a national executive structure. He acts within the Politburo and on issues that are already defined as policy, he exercises his mandate. If there are issues that need policy intervention he goes to the Politburo or the Central Committee.

The Politburo is only a secretariat of the Central Committee and reports to the Central Committee. So this is the due process in which issues are raised. The important thing is that as war veterans, we have put our opinions on the table. I am sure you read some sentiments that we had no right to table an opinion. So we reminded the party that we are in its constitution and we are the custodians of the party and its future.

We are the school of the nation on the ideology of the party. So when we see certain things going in a certain direction that needs us to raise a red flag, we raise it and talk to our Patron, through him to the party, and have those issues addressed. That is the context in which this meeting made its resolutions.

LRM: How do you respond to sentiments that your presentations were vague?

AWT: Our claim to fame as combatants of the liberation struggle is not because we are combative against ZANU-PF. Our claim to fame is that we fought and defeated the Rhodesians to win Zimbabwe’s independence. So we took a deliberate decision as the Organising Committee led by Comrade Sekeramayi and in consultation with a wide cross-section of war veterans drawn from the security forces, the civil service and the War Veterans Association, on how to handle content in a dignified way and ensuring that nothing is left out.

This was not a meeting to say, “President mirai apo tikuudzei zvatiri kuda kutaura pano!” It was a meeting about having a constructive conversation with our Patron. Nothing we said is vague and nothing we said is to be allowed to die or fizzle out. We have follow-up mechanisms and we have ways of keeping reminding our Patron.

Like the document we are preparing, that we will hand over to him, it is a reference document and it will go to all organs of the party. Nothing will be allowed to die a natural death. And, as administrators and managers, it is our role to prepare an action matrix and then to tick the boxes as the resolutions are implemented.

LRM: I know you have said the association was not the convener of the meeting but part of the delegates. But is it not correct that it was the association led by Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa that initially called for a meeting to see President Mugabe?

AWT: Point of correction, when the association first attempted to meet on 18th February 2016, that meeting which was sadly dispersed by the police using teargas and water canons, they had not intended to meet the President or to be addressed by him. Quite to the contrary, they had intended to hold a general meeting of the members of the association. Government, through the agency of my ministry, was not involved.

The meeting of the 7th April 2016, however, was called by His Excellency the President. Since it was a State occasion and a parade called by the Commander-in-Chief, it then took place under the auspices of my ministry and also the ZANU-PF Department of War Veterans led by Cde Sekeramayi. No, the War Veterans Association were not the convener, but we were very generous to them because we invited all their executive structures from the national level down to the district level, totaling 4 150. Because of their squabbles, however, we felt that it was not good to use them as the organising frame for this meeting. We then almost ignored the association deliberately. It was tactical.

LRM: So you mean not acknowledging the presence of the national chairperson of the Zimbabwe National War Veterans Association even in introductions was a tactical move?

AWT: Yes, it was. We saw that those squabbles were not productive. That’s why we sent JOC (Joint Operations Command) to do the screening of delegates at district level, because they are a neutral body. We did not want the factional or personality driven squabbles, whatever their motivation, that were increasingly manifesting in or around the association to disturb this very historic meeting.

L.R.M: Is it not correct Brig-General that the association led Cde Mutsvangwa is the one recognised by the ministry and the party?

A.W.T: Yes, there is only one War Veterans Association which is an affiliate of ZANU-PF and which is also recognised under the War Veterans Act, hence also recognised by my ministry. This is the legal position of which Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa, as its current chairman, is also the person who is recognised by both the party and the ministry.

We don’t recognise any splinter association whether led by Cde Mandiitawepi Chimene or any other war veteran. As a matter of fact, Cde Mandi Chimene attended the preparatory meetings, two of them, as the Secretary for Information and Publicity in the national executive of the association which was elected at Great Zimbabwe in November 2014.

We are not judging them on their decision to rebel from Cde Mutsvangwa’s leadership. We are, nonetheless, aware that the High Court ruled them offside because when they passed a vote of no confidence on Mutsvangwa they had no locus standi to do so. This is because the association has a constitution, which incidentally does not provide for a vote of no confidence. You cannot expel a War Veterans Association chairman nor pass a vote of no confidence without reference to its constitution.

No matter what transgressions VaMutsvangwa did, and no matter decisions taken by ZANU-PF against him, their constitution provides that they had to hold a congress of members to remove any member of the executive.

That is why Jabulani Sibanda was removed by a congress held in Masvingo. At law, therefore, Cde Mandi Chimene is free to initiate a process to remove some or all of its leadership but she has to follow the constitution of the association. Making a press statement at HICC is not enough to remove the chairman of the association. This is why, as a ministry, we do not recognise Mandi Chimene and her group but we are welcoming and engaging them, as indeed we are doing, simply as war veterans.

LRM: Can you comment on the issue of the gun and politics? You seem to have contracted the President on the fact that politics must lead the gun and not the other way round.

AWT: We in the security establishment of Zimbabwe, from when I was 16 years old, you see my hair has greyed now, we have always respected that tenet that politics controls the gun, that’s why there is no military coup in Zimbabwe. You will not even have anyone dreaming of a coup in Zimbabwe because we are schooled and thoroughly practised in this principle. I have never even thought that such waywardness is possible. In Zimbabwe, we religiously follow that principle. That’s why we were able to raise the country’s flag high in all the missions we were involved in from Mozambique, DRC and peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Angola, Cambodia, East Timor, Lesotho, Bosnia and Sudan.

We are much sought after wherever we are deployed because the Zimbabwean soldier is highly professional. Our Security Forces are thoroughly professional. But what the comrades were saying about this theory, as well as the fish and water theory, was simply that those theories must not be used to exclude us from politics. They are saying the party must accord us a place in national politics, a place reserved for war veterans as a matter of deliberate policy. Not a situation where I have retired from the army, then I have to go to my rural areas and request to be put in a cell, yet the people there don’t even know or want to recognise me, my history or my contribution to Zimbabwe’s liberation.

LRM: I get your point. But are you alive to the fact that as war veterans your numbers are diminishing by day and you need new, younger membership to push the agenda of the party? Don’t you think the party needs to be organic and also think about its sustenance beyond your generation?

AWT: ZANU-PF and the war veterans are completely mindful of the need for renewal. ZANU-PF as a party has an ideology and the ideology is the one that delivered all the things like education for all, health for all, affirmative policies on the girl child, land reform and indigenisation and empowerment. The health delivery system established by ZANU-PF may be struggling to supply essentials like drugs and medical equipment due to 15 years of sanctions, but no one can dispute that the structure is there within walking reach and there are people who will attend to you, say when bitten by a snake.

ZANU-PF has also built a formidable road network that has withstood the impact of the sanctions. No well-meaning person can dispute that, even after all the sanctions-induced battering, we still have perhaps the best trunk road network in Southern Africa outside South Africa. We don’t have any sense of entitlement as war veterans. We are keen to have the young join the party, but it’s better to have few members than to have millions of youths who are misguided and have no clue about the party’s ethos or its ideology.

Indeed, when they shout out there threatening to beat us up saying we have diabetes are uneducated, we feel sorry for them. Is that the ideology of the party? We are older than them and we have seen a lot about this party that they have not! We did not read about the liberation struggle, we participated in it from a very young age. I joined at 16 years myself (when I was) in Form Two. People like Psychology Maziwisa and Kudzai Chipanga, for all their high positions in the party, need to be schooled about the ZANU-PF way.

As far as the party’s ideology is concerned, they really need an education so that they may be saved from the divisive shallowness they display whenever they find themselves in front of a microphone. The ZANU-PF way is to learn from and to respect our elders, and not to berate and threaten them. War veterans, any war veteran for that matter, can offer a free set of lessons to these youngsters so that they know that the party is not anchored on personalities or other materialistic considerations, but foremost on its tried and tested pan-Africanist socialist ideology.

LRM: As war veterans are you not also to blame for creating space for such characters to weave through the party and assume leadership positions? Are you not also to blame for not creating a framework for them?

AWT: That is why we are raising a red flag as war veterans, that perhaps the party has not applied itself to the hierarchy of the revolution in choosing its leaders of today. The comrades are observing that the tiers of the revolution, that is the surviving Central Committee, the High Command, the General Staff, and so forth, no longer seem to be discernible in the current hierarchy of the party, which now seems to be dominated by the new blood that you are talking about.

I agree, those people who rise into positions really need schooling. Comrades feel that they who delivered Independence are now being treated like observers and outsiders by their own party. Many of the young blood that are now in influential positions have the voice and capacity that some of us do not have, to be quick with the word. Ninety-nine percent of the time these young characters are much quicker than us to the public domain and we are left to explain ourselves in perpetuity that their word is not the truth.

LRM: Are you not exaggerating the influence of these young people you say are quick with the word because demographically, ZANU-PF has thrived on the rural vote, which is not accessible to such platforms as Facebook and Twitter?

AWT: I am not accepting defeat. I am actually asserting our position as war veterans but saying we have capacity through our Patron to restore that uniqueness of ZANU-PF. For us to be different from all the other political parties is because of that ideology that has won the hearts and minds of the people not a bag of maize or a prolific social media presence.

LRM: As a parting shot Cde Tapfumaneyi, you are agreeing with people who say the war veterans’ meeting with President Mugabe was a defining and historic meeting directing the future of ZANU-PF?

AWT: I do not think it is right that we can claim to have the power to direct the future of ZANU-PF. I, however, hope that our collective opinion as tabled in this meeting will help nudge the party back to its rails where it may have some of its wheels running in the mud. This is the first meeting that we have had of this magnitude.

It’s even bigger than any congress that ZANU-PF has ever had. Our congresses normally have between 5 000 to 6 000 delegates. So this is not a forum that can be ignored by the nation or by ZANU-PF. It’s a kind of forum that has put an opinion on the table, which is worth listening to. It’s not a forum that was meant kubaya President muziso.

No! Or to say simukai tienzane! No! It was a forum for a conversation with our Patron. And our Patron said he has listened and is going to address the issues. We are happy with that. Indeed, the entire nation is happy with the orderly, dignified, constructive, yet frank and cordial, manner in which this meeting was held.