WAR Veterans League secretary, Cde Douglas Mahiya, says the former freedom fighters are targeting to mobilize 1,4 million votes for President Mnangagwa and the ruling party Zanu-PF in the forthcoming general elections slated for August 23.
He said this yesterday in Gweru in an interview on the sidelines of a provincial mobilization meeting that was attended by war veterans, war collaborators, ex-political prisoners, detainees, restrictees, and children of war veterans.
Cde Mahiya said the war veterans fraternity has managed to grow over the years fostered by ideological penetration that has found its way down to the grandchildren of freedom fighters to form a holistic constituency.
“As war veterans, we have become united after the formation of the war veterans league under the second republic and we are working together towards mobilization of votes for President Mnangagwa and the ruling party,” he said.
“All war veterans are members of the Zanu PF party. We had come to remind them about their constitutional mandate of mobilizing all other war veterans including those who were on the way-side, to participate in the campaigning team and national development.
“About 1,4 million people from the war veterans’ side including spouses, our children, grandchildren, and all those who grew up under the custodians of war veterans are part of us because they naturally inherited liberation ideology,” he said.
“The Gweru meeting is part of countrywide outreach to conscientise all war veterans and affiliates towards the planned 1,5 million men march to be held in Harare on a date to be announced.
“The whole excursion is about the revival of the liberation spirit into war veterans and affiliates about the revolutionary principles and fundamentals.
“Zanu-PF is an organization, which is organized in quasi-military, so, I had come to give them what we know should be done and mobilize them towards 1,5 million march in Harare on a date to be advised,” he added.
Midlands Province Zanu-PF deputy chairman Cde Chakunyuka Chiherenge said the party was working closely with the war veterans league and their children as part of the campaigning team.
“As Zanu-PF in the Midlands Province we are working together with the war veterans league and associates. We are one, we are united and we share the same ideology. For the party to be called Zanu-PF it came from the war veterans.
“Children of war veterans have good orientation of where the nation came from because they come from the guardians of freedom fighters and I am happy they also have positions in the youths’ executive in our party structures,” he said.
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