VICE-President Phelekezela Mphoko has been told to shut up as his liberation war and personal history is allegedly soiled.
by NQOBANI NDLOVU Mphoko on Sunby Zanu PF supporters during a campaign rally in Bulawayo for the June 10 by-elections that he was disappointed by Dumiso Dabengwa for having soiled his war record by quitting Zanu PF to rejoin Zapu.
But Methuseli Moyo, a political activist, accused Mphoko of soiling his war history by deciding to collaborate with Zanu PF when his fellow ex-combatants in Zapu had been
killed during Gukurahundi.
“It appears VP Mphoko and other ex-Zapu leaders in Zanu PF feel incomplete and insecure without Dabengwa, who in 2008 left the ruling party to revive Zapu. Mphoko says Dabengwa has ‘soiled’ his liberation war icon status by leaving Zanu PF,” Moyo said.
“To the contrary, it is him who soiled his own liberation status by choosing to collaborate with Zanu while his Zapu comrades were being butchered by the same party during Gukurahundi and even well before that.”
He added: “Whether he agrees or not, it is a fact that most Zimbabweans believe Mphoko ‘sold out’ to Zanu during and after the struggle.
It is, therefore, Mphoko’s own liberation war status and indeed personal identity that has been ‘soiled’ and not Dabengwa’s.”
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Moyo said Dabengwa spent 17 years in the struggle, at times on the front-line, whileMphoko spent the last years of the struggle “either unaccounted for or doing what he thought was best for himself — which was remaining in Mozambique when the Zipra contingent sent there under the Zipa arrangement between Zanu and Zapu had been recalled”.
“Zimbabweans are anxious to know that aspect of his history in its fullest and earnestness, and where he was during Gukurahundi, doing what, under whose leadership and why,” he said.
The VP after his appointment to the post, also criticised Dabengwa and others for leaving Zanu PF to revive Zapu, saying this was a futile exercise as the Unity Accord still subsisted.
Dabengwa responded by describing the VP as a sellout and a cheat who hid information that he was a State security agent after Independence.
Dabengwa has said he was surprised Mphoko was hiding the fact that he was a Central Intelligence Organisation agent before he became a diplomat and advised him to shut up about Zapu as he had long expelled himself from the party when he refused to join other Zipra commanders from pulling out of Zimbabwe People’s Army that brought together the Zipra and Zanla forces in the 1970s.
Mphoko could not be reached for comment yesterday.
