Hundreds of Zimbabwean youths are being brainwashed and abused by the ruling Zanu-PF as instruments for maintaining its hold on the country, say Southern African church leaders.
The church leaders, who have grouped under an organisation called the Solidarity Peace Trust, have compiled a report on a programme called the ”National Youth Service Training” (NYST), which, in ”reality, is a paramilitary programme for Zimbabwe’s youth with the clear aim of inculcating blatantly antidemocratic, racist and xenophobic attitudes”.
The trust, which is chaired by Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, released the report, An Overview of Youth Militia Training and Activities in Zimbabwe, in Johannesburg last week.
The report contains the horror accounts of several teenagers who were forced to sign up for the programme. Ncube introduced young Zimbabweans with first-hand accounts of their experiences with the NYST. It is estimated that between 30 000 and 50 000 youths have been inducted into the programme.
Debbie (19) was forced by Zanu-PF to sign up for the NYST in 2001. She was taken to a training centre outside Bulawayo and made to run a 20km stretch. Debbie said if they stopped out of exhaustion, they were beaten.
At night Debbie and the other female teenagers were locked up with boys, who she said raped them through the night. She said if they complained to the superiors they were threatened with guns.
She fell pregnant, and a subsequent blood test revealed that she was HIV-positive. Before the elections in 2002, Debbie said, they were instructed to beat any person seen wearing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) T-shirt.
The report provides details of the use of the youth militia to propagate Zanu-PF propaganda in ”everything from manipulating election results to controlling the food distribution process to the party’s advantage”.
A 25-year-old Zimbabwean youth who entered the youth militia training in 2002 said they were given history lessons in which they were told that the whites seized their land and sent royalties earned from it to other countries.
”So we were taught that it is an advantage for the blacks or the Zimbabweans to seize land from the whites and to start using it for farming, particularly irrigation, as well as crop farming, because all the produce will go to the Grain Marketing Board … In times of hunger the board is going to plough that back to the people, which does not happen with the safari lodges.”
Ncube appealed to members of the Southern African Development Community to condemn the Zimbabwean government for promoting the militirisation of the youth.
The trust has called for the immediate end to the programme and the closure of all training camps across Zimbabwe. The organisation has also proposed the setting up of a national forum of civic and church leaders to determine a comprehensive programme for the rehabilitation and reintegration of former members of the militia into society.