War veterans spokesperson Douglas Mahiya has said that the former freedom fighters are unhappy with the way they have been treated by the Zanu-PF party. Mahiya said that after all their efforts in fighting to remove former president Robert Mugabe they should have been given preferential treatment instead of being sidelined. Speaking to The Standard,
As far as I am concerned, war veterans should have been given a chance to get seats. As war veterans who have been disadvantaged for the past 38 years under former president Robert Mugabe, we should have been given a quota as is the case with women.
We have been disadvantaged and we should not be made to stand against these young persons. It is not fair to have us humiliated by these young ones who have the money and relatives at the top as was the case with Harare South…as war veterans, we implore the party to demonstrate a degree of honesty and respect the resolutions of the November 18 central committee meeting that agreed that war veterans should be raised in all structures of the party and government.
They hoodwinked us. They don’t want us to occupy positions in the party and government and we don’t know why…We stood against the Mugabe dynasty. we were jailed and received all sorts of ill-treatment. This is the party we served and why should we be undermined?
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