WEDNESDAY, 3.00PM
A GROUP of angry Zimbabwean war veterans attempted to storm the national parliament building in Harare on Tuesday, prompting the legislature to call on President Robert Mugabe to take urgent action on war veterans’ compensation pay-outs.
Riot police were called in to break up the demonstration by more than 100 former combatants who demanded to talk to members of the governing party’s supreme decision-making body, the politburo. They charged that the ruling Zanu-PF party is responsible for the delays in the disbursement of their monies under the controversial War Victims Compensation Fund.
Deputies, the majority of them former liberation war combatants, said only Mugabe can solve the sensitive and potentially explosive issue of war veterans’ pay-outs.
Mugabe’s government has been facing mounting protests by ex-combatants, demanding lump-sum payments from the veterans’ compensation fund. Disbursement of the funds was suspended early this year following charges it was being abused by high-ranking state officials who helped themselves to millions of dollars at the expense of suffering and unemployed veterans.
Hundreds of disabled former guerrillas, part of the 70 000 who took to the bush during the war, have in recent weeks demonstrated outside the State House and the parliament and, on Monday, they locked up senior Zanu-PF officials and some ministers in the ruling party headquarters.
Mugabe has promised to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the alleged embezzlement of funds by ruling party officials.
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