Jabulani Sibanda 'plots' against war vets patron

Axed war veterans chairman Jabulani Sibanda has suggested that the former freedom fighters restructure their association and add a position of president in what is viewed as a covert operation to remove President Robert Mugabe as patron.

There have been reports especially in the private media of plots to try and remove President Mugabe from being the patron of the former freedom fighters body.

Although he denied plots to remove President Mugabe as war veterans' patron, Sibanda was quoted yesterday in the private media saying that he was working to make sure that he (President Mugabe) loses elections in the 2018 polls.

Addressing war veterans in Bulawayo on Saturday, Sibanda called on former freedom fighters to "come together" and restructure the war veterans body to have the positions of president and national chairman to strengthen it.

"You need to give more power to the position of the person at the top and upgrade it to president and then have a national chairman," said Sibanda, a member of axed Vice President Joice Mujuru's Zimbabwe People First Party.

Sibanda was brought to the meeting by war veterans national chairman Chris Mutsvangwa in a move strongly condemned by the Zanu-PF Women's league.

Yesterday, one of the war veterans who passed a vote of no confidence on Mutsvangwa, Mandi Chimene, said the suggestions were symbolic of the greatest form of treachery.

"That'll never happen. This is the greatest form of treachery, it doesn't go beyond this. After all Jabulani is a renegade war veteran and it raises eyebrows how he was allowed to address that meeting," said Chimene.

"Jabulani wants to pull the people into the dark but we're very alert. We've read their plots a long time ago. Zanu-PF is like a general hospital, when we admit you, we give you a bed but when we discharge you, we keep that bed. Jabulani is trying to walk away with the hospital bed and we won't accept that."

Chimene said Sibanda should concentrate on his party and stop trying to sway former freedom fighters.

She also attacked Mutsvangwa, accusing him of trying to cause chaos among war veterans.

Chimene said by liaising with Sibanda, Mutsvangwa revealed that he shares a similar agenda with the axed war veterans' chairperson.

"That's why we decided that we can't work with him and passed a vote of no confidence against Mutsvangwa," she said.

War veterans secretary general Victor Matemadanda, said they were planning a march to Harare to demand answers over why their colleagues were dispersed by the police using tear gas at an aborted meeting last month.

This is despite clarifications by President Mugabe in his address to the nation that Mutsvangwa had called for an unsanctioned meeting without notifying the head of state and security ministries.

"We want to toyi-toyi to Harare," said Matemadanda. "We need to prepare. When we go to be de-commissioned everyone should go even our children, vendors, wives and husbands, cross-border traders. We'll all go and ask . . . we're talking of a three million men march that is everyone concerned."

He said they wanted to know why they were tear-gasssed and had what "was said to be water" sprayed to disperse them in Harare when the "weapons we had were newspapers while under trees" when they had "supposedly planned to meet the President".

Matemadanda said there were some politicians who "think their blood is more precious than that of others".

"A war veteran isn't an individual, it's a spirit," he said.

He scoffed at recent expulsions of some Zanu-PF members saying this would not do the party any good.

"When you talk of expulsion, it's a paper expulsion," he said. "Put it in my blood. Inject expulsion in my blood."