ZAPU Castigates Former Members In ZANU PF
ZAPU Secretary-General, Mthulisi Hanana, has castigated former members who remained in ZANU PF when the party withdrew from the ruling party in 2009.
PF ZAPU led by the now late Joshua Nkomo and ZANU which was then led by late State president Robert Mugabe, merged in 1987 when the two former liberation movements signed the Unity Accord.
However, disgruntled ex-ZPRA and ZAPU members broke away from ZANU PF a decade after Nkomo’s death, but some chose to remain with the ruling party.
Addressing mourners at the funeral service of ZAPU national chairperson, Mark Nzula Mbayiwa in Bulawayo Wednesday, Hanana said:
Mbayiwa was one of the few courageous ex-ZPRA cadres who left earlier, even before ZAPU did so.
He left and contested as an independent candidate in Nyamandlovu. It takes a few brave men to break ranks with the government but a lot have become cowards.
We don’t know what has happened because you hear them say we are fighting from within, yet they will be lying to us, while they are eating and enjoying at the expense of fellow cadres they went to war with.
Many in ZPRA are not vetted, they don’t receive anything from the state. The ZPRA and ZAPU history is too heavy for them, that’s why they are not here at Mbayiwa’s funeral.
Hanana opined that those ex-ZPRA cadres who remained in ZANU PF were not representing anyone but themselves. He said:
I cannot understand how after fighting for Zimbabwe so well and so hard, the country that you fought for rejects you, we don’t see your history.
You went to war to give birth to a country with high unemployment and corruption, that’s why ZAPU left ZANU PF.
You hear them say, ‘we were left behind by Joshua Nkomo.’ I then ask why would Nkomo leave you there, if he didn’t even leave his child, Sibangilizwe there.
