'Mphoko playing to the gallery,' says war vets

WAR veterans yesterday accused Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko of playing to the gallery and seeking to please his master, President Robert Mugabe, by "falsely" labelling MDC-T leader Morgan an accomplice in the Gukurahundi atrocities.

Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association secretary-general, Victor Matemadanda said it was shameful for Mphoko to lie about the massacres, which were still fresh in the victims' memories.

"He is approval-seeking. He wants to please the appointing power because he is a beneficiary of what he doesn't work for. He is trying to please President Mugabe by whatever means," he said.

"It is well known that the operation that caused Gurukurahundi was purely military and because he wants to exonerate President Mugabe, he is trying to create lies about the whole scenario.

"For a person, who is Vice-President, who sometimes acts as President, it is just unfortunate for this country that it has that calibre of leaders who do not care about history, who do not care about what they say."

There is no love lost between the former fighters and Mphoko, as at one stage the war veterans recommended that the Vice-President be fired.

Matemadanda said it was a hard sell for the VP to implicate Tsvangirai in such massacres yet in fact Mugabe had spoken about the killings, as evidenced by his utterances at a war veterans' meeting in Harare last year, where he threatened to employ the same tactics on a section of war veterans.

Matemadanda said instead of peddling lies, Mphoko, who is in charge of the National Healing ministry, should concentrate on healing strategies for the victims.

Mphoko, at the weekend, claimed Tsvangirai was involved in the government-sanctioned mass killings, which claimed an estimated 20 000 lives in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in the 1980s. He said Tsvangirai was at one time involved in an assassination attempt of the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo.