Source: We’ll kill land grabbers: War veterans – NewsDay Zimbabwe April 29, 2019
BY JAMES MUONWA
The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association (ZNLWVA) has fired salvos at government officials and family members, who grab farms and dispossess widows and children of fallen heroes.
ZNLWVA said it would vigorously protect heroes’ widows and can “kill to defend what is rightfully ours”.
This, the association noted, follows a worrisome trend whereby officials from the Lands ministry connive with unscrupulous individuals to push fallen heroes’ widows and their children off farms following the deaths of heroes.
ZNLWVA Mashonaland West chapter secretary-general Mudzingaidzwa Nyikadzino Mudarikwa said ex-combatants will fight tooth-and-nail to defend surviving spouses’ entitlement to land and anyone who harbours sinister motives would bear the brunt of the former guerrilla fighters.
“We get mad when we are denied what is rightfully ours. We claim what is ours. Our solemn liberation struggle pledge was to claim our land from colonialists and, therefore, to attempt to dispossess widows and children of departed liberation war heroes would be an affront to our cause.
“Anyone who tries this automatically becomes our enemy. We were trained to confront and kill the enemy,” Mudarikwa said while addressing mourners at the burial of State spy agent Martin Nyashanu in Chinhoyi on Wednesday.
Nyashanu, who was a senior Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operative, collapsed and died on Easter Monday and was conferred provincial hero.
Mudarikwa reiterated that the Lands ministry should expedite ownership transfer of farms to widows to avoid condemning them and their off-spring to destitution.
He cited a case in which Woodlands Farm, Tengwe in Hurungwe district, measuring 100 hectares, was snatched from a war veteran’s widow and sold off to an Indian businessman.
The widow is challenging the illegal take-over of the land at the courts.
Mudarikwa challenged bereaved families to productively utilise allocated farms and guard the gains of the liberation struggle that brought the country’s independence.
Mashonaland East ZNLWVA chairman Daniel Sigauke echoed the same sentiments, urging war veterans, ex-detainees and war collaborators to remain united in defence of the country’s sovereignty.
Recently, the widow of national hero Vitalis Zvinavashe lost a huge chunk of her fertile Knockmallock Farm in Norton to a Chinese company, Sunny Yi Feng Tiles (Zimbabwe) (Pvt) Ltd, after it was given the land to set up a ceramic tiles factory under controversial circumstances.
COMMENTS
Munongova mbavha imi vanhu vezanu pf. Maimboreva nhema muchiti muri kutorera varungu, now the whites are no longer there but you still continue grabbing land & other private properties from fellow blacks. You are nothing but a bunch of thieves & robbers. And we hear these so-called o-vets talking of protecting themselves and/or widows against their fellow zanu pf robbers; then you ask why not protect every other black person if ever you have capacity to even protect yourselves? Is it ok if they rob any other person who is neither an O-vet nor widow of some O-vet? Shldnt such behaviour being fought from a principle stand point as opposed to who is being robbed of his/her property? Inga muhondo maibvuma kuti simba rehpve riri mumvura wani. Now why is it not the case kuti mukabatana nevamwe vese who are being robbed you wld be as powerful as fish in water? Not as stand alone group muchizvinyepera kuti munesimba remunaro. Truth is you have no power at all. That’s why muchingosweravo muchisvipirwa mate kumeso nevashoma vezanu pf vane power yacho.