Zipra Veterans’ Trust chairman Buster Willy Magwizi has criticised authors of local history textbooks for distorting the history of the country’s liberation struggle by portraying Zanla combatants as having made major contributions towards independence as compared to other groups.
Magwizi told NewsDay yesterday his group would soon organise a national memorial lecture to set the record straight and lay out to the public the role played by Zipra cadres during the liberation war.
Zipra was Zapu’s military wing while Zanla was the military wing of Zanu PF. Both wings fought side by side to dislodge the Ian Smith settler regime.
“The lecture will encompass a Zipra executive meeting to discuss our internal issues,” he said.
“It will also seek to enlighten the public at large on the pivotal role played by Zipra in the liberation war. Zipra has Nitrum Holdings company. We will discuss issues concerning it. We will also look at the issue of farms owned by Zipra to see how war veterans are benefiting from them.”
Magwizi said most of the properties belonging to Zipra ex-combatants were taken by government at independence and were never returned, leaving most Zipra comrades who were shareholders in the companies to wallow in poverty.
“We are calling all the Zipra ex-combatants from across the world to attend this memorial lecture because it will be exploring most of the issues which affect them and are currently hanging. We also have programmes of promoting and on the day we will enlighten the people on how we are carrying out the programmes,” he added.
