War veterans trained local fume over relegation to mere collaborators

SOME war veterans who were trained but could not go to fight at the front when a ceasefire was declared in 1980 have complained over the ruling Zanu PF government degrading their status to that of mere collaborators.

Indications are that there are several war veterans who were trained locally by the liberation war fighters who were operating at the front and on the vetting process, there are reports that most of them have been vetted as war collaborators much to their concerns.

 A liberation war fighter, Max Nkandla has said he has conversed with a number of such former liberation war fighters who are concerned over their relegation to the mere collaborators when they also embarked in the combat fighting having trained inside the country.

"Our comrades who were trained within the country and when ceasefire was announced they went to assembly points together with the liberation fighters who were trained outside and even got integrated into national army are fuming that in the vetting process, they are now being regarded as collaborators," he said.,

"Government must intervene and correct this anomaly as this is unfair to such people who contributed to the liberation of the country as fighters. There are some women who are still having children of the war fighters who abused women at the time and those children became the burden of those women. The comrade who impregnated these women must go and look for their children wherever they left them."

He said the government must also look into these issues because they are real and this has affected quite a number of people in various parts of the country when children were born from that war period but do not know their fathers.

"The minister must also know between a locally trained freedom fighter and the collaborator. A collaborator never entered the assembly point when the cease-fire was signed at Lancaster House, while a locally trained cadre was in the bush. Of these locally trained, some of them were demobilised whereas some were integrated into the army," Mkandla said.

He said it is important that those who deserve the war vet status are accorded the same.

Mkandla said the United Nations at the time of war had labeled all the liberation fighters as terrorists including those who were locally trained and those who were still training in camps outside the country.

He said it is unfair and wrong to call such people collaborators.

"Those people were being bombed by the white regime as terrorists. And now when it is time for eating, you call them collaborators, it's very wrong," he said.