The recent visit by former Zanla combatants to Nampundu and Freedom Camps in Zambia and the controversial rituals at Njelele in Matabeleland South are set to top the Zipra Veterans Trust annual general meeting agenda in Bulawayo on Sunday.
Reporter by Staff Reporter Buster Willy Magwizi, the chairman of the trust, said the visits had angered members of the former Zapu military wing.
“We will deliberate on the ex-Zanla combatants’ escapades to the Nampundu and Freedom camps where they allegedly extracted soil and stones from the graves of our colleagues without talking to us,” he said.
“The involvement of Zanla, roping in traditional leaders and their interest in the Zipra shrines and Njelele in Matobo, suggests to us weird intentions. It is complete disregard for Zipra values, living and dead alike. It is disrespectful of a people’s culture and inhuman”
“It is outrightly offensive, unjust and criminal and we will talk about it.”
Magwizi said they wanted to understand why the ex-Zanla combatants violated Zipra’s intellectual and property rights.
Magwizi alleged the group “went to the graves to destroy Zipra’s historical evidence without consulting relatives of the late cadres”.
Last month, over 500 ex-Zanla combatants in the company of chiefs from Mashonaland provinces thronged Matopos Hills where they conducted rituals without consulting local traditional leaders.
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Magwizi said the meeting will also discuss the exhumation of remains of former fighters in Mt Darwin that were halted by the courts last year. “We made a High Court application barring the exhumations and we want to review what has happened since we stopped the exhumations,” he said.
Magwizi said the former fighters would also review their businesses that were grabbed by President Robert Mugabe’s administration soon after independence.
