Prominent South African opposition politician Mmusi Maimane on Tuesday said Zimbabwean freedom fighters who paid the ultimate price, fighting for the country’s emancipation from colonial bondage, died for nothing.
Posting on Twitter, Maimane, the former leader of South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), said the liberation heroes should be turning in their graves over the way the country was being destroyed by corrupt cartels linked to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government. Said Maimane:
The heroes who died for Zimbabwe are turning in their graves. Their spirits are restless.
… No one gave their life away hoping for an evil, corrupt regime of thieves led by Mnangagwa.
They did not die for self-inflicted poverty. The heroes of Zimbabwe have been betrayed.
Zimbabwe celebrated Heroes Day on Monday and the Zimbabwe Defence Forces Day on Tuesday.
Maimane, who formed the One South Africa Movement last year, is critical of the Harare administration and has clashed on social media with several Zimbabwean government officials.
He has been a critic of Mnangagwa’s administration, saying it is destroying the economy and perpetrating human rights abuses.
Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba immediately responded to Maimane on Twitter, curtly referring to him as a “sellout”, a term routinely used to describe government critics by ruling ZANU PF party officials.