HARARE | Wednesday
ZIMBABWE war veterans threatened on Tuesday to boycott the funeral of their controversial leader, Chenjerai Hitler Hunzvi, if the government fails to award him national hero status, the state news agency said.
Hunzvi, who led a bloody campaign of invasions of white commercial farms which started last year, died here Monday from cerebral malaria. He was also suffering from a liver disease and a serious bone marrow problem – both usually Aids-related, according to medical experts. He had been on a life support in Harare’s Parirenyatwa Hospital for two day, after originally collapsing at a hotel in the country’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, two weeks ago. He was 51 and seen as a close aide to President Robert Mugabe.
The ZANU-PF politburo, the highest decision-making body of the ruling party, will on Wednesday announce whether Hunzvi will be accorded national hero status.
Such status is generally given to people who played a prominent role in the liberation war of the 1970s.
Mugabe told Hunzvi’s relatives however, that it was likely he would be given hero status, ZIANA reported late on Tuesday. However, the president added, “I don’t want to jump the politburo”.
While Hunzvi spearheaded the invasion of up to 1_700 white-owned farms in the name of a government land reform programme, he has a dubious war record. He spent much of the 1970s in Poland. Hunzvi has been accused of only playing a role in the war as a civilian.
Joseph Chinotimba, the provincial chairman of the National Liberation War Veterans Association, said: “If they (the politburo) do not agree to our requests that Hunzvi be buried at the National Heroes Acre we will boycott his burial and we will not allow anyone to take his body from hospital”.
Other war veterans have threatened to go ahead and bury Hunzvi in the National Heroes Acre, even if the government denies him hero status, the ZIANA news agency reported.
The late minister for gender and employment, Border Gezi and the late minister of defense, Moven Mahachi, who both died last month, were given national hero status and buried at the Heroes Acre.
Mugabe on Tuesday used his visit to Hunzvi’s grieving family to attack whites and Britain, ZIANA reported.
“We are in the process of not only fighting whites but Britain’s Blair who is not sleeping to see the government removed – this government of war veterans,” Mugabe said.
War veterans have meanwhile lashed out at newspaper criticism of their leader. Chinotimba warned the opposition Daily News that war veterans were “still in power” after the newspaper described him as notorious, ZIANA said.
I am surprised that there are some people who describe war veterans as notorious and we are going to see what to do with these people,” he said.
The Daily News carried a report on Tuesday describing Hunzvi as “notorious for spearheading the invasion of white-owned commercial farms”. – AFP
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