Liberators Platform Launches Scathing Attack On Brigadier

SW Radio Africa (London)

Tichaona Sibanda

1 June 2011

The board of trustees of the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP) on Wednesday lobbed a vitriolic verbal grenade at Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba, for suggesting Robert Mugabe should rule forever.

ZLP, a group of ex-guerrillas who claim that the struggle’s ideals have been betrayed, described the ‘self-opinionated’ commander of 3 Brigade in Mutare as an ‘arrogant and rotten apple’ within the defence force.

ZLP condemned Nyikayaramba’s remarks and demanded that he be reprimanded or dismissed from the army. Wilfred Mhanda, known during the liberation war as Dzinashe Machingura, is a former high-ranking ZANLA commander and is a trustee of ZLP.

He said his organisation would hope Nyikayaramba’s views are not representative of the thinking of the officer corps of the Zimbabwe Defences Forces. Mhanda, who was appointed to the high command in 197, told us most of those who sit on the Joint Operations Command (JOC) went through his hands.

He claimed to have trained ZDF commander Constantine Chiwenga and Air Marshal Perence Shiri during the early years of the war and he also trained Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri later on.

‘I think his remarks are just the ranting and raving of an isolated overzealous ZANU PF zealot, a clear misfit within the ranks of the ZDF,’ Mhanda said in a joint statement co-signed by another trustee, Happyson Nenji, also a former war vet who used his chimurenga name, Webster Gwauya.

ZLP said the Brigadier, who stands accused by the MDC-T of rigging the 2002 Presidential elections in favour of his commander-in-chief, needs to be reminded that the ZDF are a national institution funded and supported by tax payers’ money and not from ZANU PF coffers.

‘The soldiers’ loyalty should lie towards the people of Zimbabwe and not ZANU PF. The defence forces are not a ZANU PF militia as he imagines. The national defence forces and other arms of state security should be rid of unprofessional officers and rotten apples like him,’ ZLP said.

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition waded into the Nyikayaramba controversy and said there is no way the people of Zimbabwe can have free and fair elections that are without violence or intimidation, if the army made such reckless utterances.

‘Unless and until we have a truly independent and non-partisan military, and security sector encompassing the police, prisons, and the central intelligence agency, then to hold elections would be to needlessly put the lives of the electorate in harm’s way,’ said Dewa Mavhinga, regional coordinator for Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

In a statement Mavhinga said it is now abundantly clear that the fundamental challenge and the root of the governance crisis in Zimbabwe, is the extremely partisan and politicized security sector.

‘SADC must know now that any road map to Zimbabwe elections that does not ensure a complete separation of the military from political and electoral affairs is a sheer waste of time. All meddling in political and civilian affairs by the military must be stopped.

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