Mugabe told to respect war veterans

President Robert Mugabe has been told to respect war veterans just days after the president said that former freedom fighters were not special in the ruling Zanu-PF party, according to a report.

According to NewsDay, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association secretary-general Victor Matemadanda said that the Mugabes had no prerogative to 'disrespect' other people, including the former liberation fighters.

Matemadanda cautioned the leader not to divide people in the southern African country through "insults".

He further alleged that there was a group within the ruling party that was condoning insults, as they would ululate when the former veterans were being insulted by both President Mugabe and his wife Grace.

Matemadanda said it was also regrettable that Mugabe was dining with people who fought on the side of colonial rulers during the country's independence war in the 1970s.

Earlier this week, President Mugabe reportedly urged some war veterans to stop their "ill-conceived" idea of entitlement in leading the alleged faction-ridden Zanu-PF.

'Politics leads the gun'

According to the state owned Chronicle newspaper, during an address at the state funeral of retired Brigadier-General James Murozvi at the heroes acre in Harare, Mugabe said that those who had fought in the liberation war should be satisfied with any position the Zanu-PF party was giving to them.

Mugabe was quoted saying that the Zanu-PF principle that "politics leads the gun" should be respected.

"In this party we believe that we have a job to do, if we are to be given [a] position, we should accept the positions. We should agree that the politics leads the gun…" Mugabe was quoted as saying.

Widespread reports have indicated that the long-standing leader has frosty relations with war veterans following a leaked confidential ministerial document which had revealed that Mugabe could be in trouble after the war veterans declared that they no longer wanted him to lead the southern African country.

The war veterans, who called Mugabe "a genocidal dictator", issued a damning communiqué sometime in 2016, declaring that they would not support Mugabe's candidature in the 2018 national elections.

They argued that the president's candidacy was going to be a hard sell because of his advanced age.

But Mugabe's wife Grace declared recently that Zimbabweans would vote for Mugabe's "corpse" if it were on a ballot.