via Bulawayo24 NEWS | Obert Mpofu ‘fakes’ his liberation war credentials 28 November 2014
OFFICIALS from the Zipra Trust have accused Transport minister Obert Mpofu of faking his liberation war credentials by over stating his role in the struggle.
Mpofu recently brandished his liberation war credentials saying he was the best commando but his former colleagues in Zipra say he is exaggerating his role.
Officials from Zipra Trust revealed that while Mpofu trained as a fighter, he immediately went to India to further his education and may not have been deployed at the war front as he claimed.
Mpofu reportedly told a gathering in Victoria Falls on Monday that he was the best trained guerrilla in the country, but the Zipra Trust officials said he only received normal training like anyone else.
According to the former guerrillas, when Zipra was working on plans to attack Wankie (now Hwange), Mpofu’s brother – a staunch Zapu supporter – suggested that they use his sibling as a courier to his father in Jambezi.
They said a combined force made up of Umkhonto Wesizwe, the armed military wing of South Africa’s ANC and Zipra – known as the Luthuli Detachment – crossed through Jambezi into the Wankie National Park and Mpofu’s father, together with a Sibanda, drove goats to cover the detachment’s trail by wiping the fighters’ spoors.
However, Mpofu’s father and Sibanda were later arrested after some villagers reported them to the Rhodesian security forces.
The family then decided to send the younger Obert to Livingstone to live with his brother fearing that he would also be arrested.
But Mpofu insists that if the officials from Zipra Trust were authentic, they would not issue a collective statement, but identify themselves. “These are the people who worked with (the late Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian) Smith,” he said.
“You must ask people like (Zapu leader Dumiso) Dabengwa about my role. I was trained in Morogoro and deployed in various parts of the country that include Binga, Deka, Mlibizi and Sipolilo (present-day Guruve).”
“If all those people saying I was never deployed are genuine guerrillas, they came when I was already furthering my education in India, they don’t know me,” Mpofu charged.
But a Zipra Trust official, Jack Mpofu, who said he was one of the commanders and used the pseudonym Daki, insists Mpofu was never deployed. “Unless he was deployed by helicopter, he never crossed the Zambezi to the war front,” he said.
“But Zipra had no helicopters.”
COMMENTS
The war of Liberation is over, smith is no more. What we want to hear now are those who believe that they can liberate Zimbabweans from the present economic darkness, lawlessness and other things. We understand the living ex fighter always want to claim to be true commanders while they would spend time hiding in caves instead of being in the battlefield. They would sneak out at night to ask for food in the villages.
The war is over period. Time to move forward and give our kids a future. Not geriatrics who still think they are 18 years old.
It would not be the first time that Mpofu has told lies, and it definitely wont be the last. This man is the embodiment of a master liar, a professional crook and a king thief. That’s why he holds such high office within ZANU Pf – he has earned it the only way one can in such an evil party!
When it comes to lying Mpofu is the best. Can he tell us his team. Some of us know some of the Zipra cadres to fight and some where actually captured and sentenced to death but pardned at the last minute when the Queen intervened. Mpofu does not appear on any of those groups.