What I am trying to get to Mr. Speaker Sir, is that we now need sincere and true war veterans because we now do not know who a true war veteran is because the former President, they are now saying that he is not a war veteran. So, who is a true war veteran? It is about time as well that the issue of the freedom fighters, especially the war collaborators is dealt with once and for all. They need to be vetted. The war veterans still must take the lead because the war collaborators are not able to get their due recognition because the vetting process has taken long and you now see two factions of the war collaborators as a result of that. So, it is important that in addressing the welfare of the war veterans, we also look at the war collaborators and ex-detainees. No wonder why in the Constitution they are known as the freedom fighters and no longer war veterans. Whether you like it or not, the former and late chairperson of war veterans Dr. Chenjerai Hunzvi was bold and you could see that he was prepared to do what he could for the war veterans. There are programmes which he had initiated and those programmes must continue. They have failed to continue because of lack of support, yes, people would want to attack the war veterans for having abused resources; there is nobody who can go to war to just be given a farm to sacrifice their life, to be given land, a tractor et cetera. The nation must respect that, I think we will be insulting our own war veterans when we say that they destroyed this country because they demanded money and because they wanted tractors.
There is no life that can be lost over anything and those things are valueless. There are war veterans today whose children were born in the struggle who have not enjoyed the fruits of this country. We have spouses of war veterans – just recently and I must thank the new President, His Excellency Cde. Mnangagwa for recognising Amai Tongogara, she was never recognised. She was moving around like a pauper yet we go on talking about how Tongogara was a great commander in the struggle, how instinctive he was and so forth.
It is only now when we have got the Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks which is there. All these years, there was nothing to recognise that. I want to comment the new administration for the new dispensation for making time to be able to recognise the war veterans; Nikita Mangena is one of them. All these are part of the people who made us who we are today and the only thing that the President has to do now is to really ensure that from a welfare point of view, the war veterans are taken care of. To me, as I have said Mr. Speaker Sir, this Government has failed to address the issues of the war veterans, nothing else but this Government. So, they cannot blame anyone.
The issue of the scholarships which are given, most of the children of the war veterans do not get that. Why can we not allow a situation where the war veterans have their own scholarship money that they run for their own children rather than them being put in the same basket as any ordinary person? When they are smilingly seen doing that, the thinking is that they are abusing the positions that they have.
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