War vets indaba cancelled under a cloud

A meeting yesterday of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association in Bulawayo to be addressed by the body's leader, Christopher Mutsvangwa, was cancelled under unclear circumstances.

Organisers said the gathering was cancelled after they resolved to wait for the return of their patron, President Mugabe who is on his annual leave, while Mutsvangwa said it was cancelled because police had not cleared it.

A "splinter" group that had threatened a demonstration had the meeting gone ahead said Mutsvangwa had bowed to their threats.

The Cephas Ncube-led war veterans executive in Bulawayo, which had organised the meeting at their Entumbane offices, said the cancellation was at the instigation of the national executive.

The executive is said to have planned to address such meetings across the country's 10 provinces.

Ncube said: "The meeting was called off as directed by the national executive. There are meetings that were supposed to be held around the country and all have been cancelled.

''The directive states that the meetings were cancelled and we wait for the return of the President."

He said the cancellation had nothing to do with the threat of demonstrations planned by a rival group.

"Those people are confused and some of them can't even look after their own families, so how do you expect them to lead such a serious organisation like the War Veterans Association?

"Some are of no fixed aboard after selling their houses (and) leaving their families stranded. How can we expect anything good from them when they are simple not organised even at family level?

"For example someone like Mitsho Ndlovu once left the party to join Zapu and Mashasha has never been organised as a person as he once embezzled district funds which resulted in him being slapped with a vote of no confidence," Ncube alleged.

"We have passed (the) stage where we are talking about elections and at this moment we are focusing on addressing issues affecting war veterans.

''It is not a secret that the association is doing well and some of the issues include joint ventures with Chinese companies to assemble trucks and also chrome mining along the Great Dyke."

However, Mutsvangwa said the national executive never instructed that the meeting be shelved.

"I am aware that the meeting was supposed to take place but it was later cancelled because the police instructed them to do so. The executive has nothing to do with what happened today," said Mutsvangwa, who is also the Minister for the War Veterans, War Collaborators, Former Political Detainees and Restrictees.

Naison Mashasha, the vice-chairperson of the splinter group, said the cancellation was a "victory" on their part.

He said Mutsvangwa was presently unfit to address them as he had a disciplinary case to answer in his home province of Mashonalaland West.

"The meeting was not supposed to take place because the chairperson is supposed to clean himself first before he spreads his poison to other parts of the country.

''If Mashonaland West province has rejected him, why then should we people of Bulawayo accept him?"

Mashonaland West province recently recommended Mutsvangwa be sacked from Zanu-PF for utterances allegedly made in the private media that were deemed as insulting of the First Family and undermining the President's authority.