MDC-T's Maridadi calls for War Veterans Ministry

MDC-T legislator and former Radio presenter James Maridadi has called for a ministry for war veterans that will cater for former freedom fighters.

Below are the excerpts of Maridadi's contribution on the motion on war veterans at the national assembly last week:

One issue that has also happened to me Mr. Speaker is that, I have taken time to speak to veterans of the liberation war and it appears that what we need to do is learn from other countries that have fought liberation wars.

I will give you an example of United Kingdom after the 1st World War; they had a whole Ministry of War Veterans.

War veterans were not looked after by a department in the Ministry of Defence or in the Ministry of Welfare.

There was a whole ministry which looked after war veterans, a Ministry of War Veterans that looked after the welfare of the war veterans to know where war veterans died.

To locate their graves and for reburial of war veterans and I will also give another example which I think Hon. Gumbo says is circumlocution.

I had in the early 2000s Mr. Speaker Sir, whether I would call it a fortune or misfortune to be involved with the location of a grave of a fallen hero who died in the last days of the liberation war in 1979.

What we have to do was to locate the grave of that liberation war hero. He died in the Tangwena area of Manicaland. We got people specialists who looked at, because there were a number of graves were identified by people in the locality.

There are about six or seven graves and yet this friend of mine wanted to just to exhume the remains of his brother and re-burry them. So, we ended up exhuming about four different graves before we could locate the actual grave of his young brother whose bones lay buried in a shallow grave.

We took them to a specialist only at that point were the bones correctly identified for reburial.

I was thinking to myself could this not be something that could be done by a Ministry? Then we have a department that only looks at the location of graves of fallen heroes and identify those fallen heroes and match them to the relatives for reburial.

But, what happens today if you go to Manicaland there are so many sites that you come across and you are told by villagers that there was a battle at this particular point and I think ten members of liberation war of either ZANLA or ZIPRA fell in the struggle and they lie buried there.

Up to this day those graves are still there they still lie in shallow graves, 34 years after independence and yet Government put together a War Victim's Compensation Fund which I think before the War Victim's Compensation Fund should have been put in place.

There should have put in place a fund that locates the graves of those that fell in the struggle and then compensation for those who are living.

The issue of war veterans Mr. Speaker as you rightly say is a very emotive one. I come to this House with a heavy heart because my own brother who participated in the liberation war from 1969 is currently in Parirenyatwa Hospital, suffering from ailments some of which I think afflicted him during the war of liberation.

He is in Parirenyatwa Hospital today and is battling to pay medical expenses.

Mr. Speaker I think Government should put in place a fund and a Ministry. If we have a Ministry of Sport that looks after sport and I think honestly we should be able to have a standalone Ministry of War Veterans which looks after war veterans.

That ministry should not be staffed by people that are said to be educated but should be staffed by people who understand and know the plight of war veterans and there are many of them.

There is something that is always peddled that war veterans are not educated. It is not true Mr. Speaker.

Whoever said war veterans are not educated? It is not necessarily true because there are war veterans that went to the struggle, they left school came back from the struggle and well known to be so educated.

Mr. Speaker there is somebody that I heard saying to a war veteran ko imi makaenda kuhondo makadzoka nei ? and one of those people who was a subject of that criticism was Hon. Zindi who sits in this House.

I think it is obscene at its highest and it should not be tolerated.

Mr. Speaker I do not agree with the strategy that War Victims Compensation Fund should be administered by the Ministry of Social Welfare. I do not also agree with the notion that vetting of war veterans should be done by some ministry or should come under the Ministry of Defense.

I think the Ministry of War Veterans, if anything, when Ministries are being appointed and Ministers are being appointed the first Ministry that should be appointed should be the Ministry of War Veterans with a permanent secretary and a Minister and a budget and that budget should take care of everything. If honestly we have a Ministry of Psychomotor we should honestly have a Ministry of War Veterans.

Mr. Speaker, most of the issues that I would have wanted to debate Mr. Speaker were debated and I will rest my case and say I will support his motion and I understand what this motion stands for."