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Pamela Shumba Senior Reporter
ZAPU leader Dumiso Dabengwa should keep his party, if it means anything to him, President Mugabe said on Thursday as he denied reports that he had asked him to rejoin Zanu-PF.Cde Mugabe, speaking to the ZBC on the eve of his 90th birthday, referred to a speech he made in Bulawayo during the unveiling of the late Vice-President Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo’s statue in December last year.
Comments he made at the event, which coincided with Unity Day, were interpreted to suggest that he was begging Dabengwa to return to the Zanu-PF fold. President Mugabe made a plea for war veterans to unite and described disunity among the former freedom fighters as an act of dishonesty and infidelity against the revolution and the legacy of the late Vice- President Joshua Nkomo.
The message was misconstrued as a call for Dr Dabengwa and his party members to return to Zanu-PF, the President told the ZBC.
“To tell you the truth, while that is necessary, that is not what I said. I was talking about war veterans, strictly war veterans,” President Mugabe said. “I said the war veterans are divided, whether it is between the former Zanla and Zipra or within the former Zanla forces or within the Zipra forces, they must come together, be together.”
The President added: “I said war veterans. I did not go beyond that. Dumiso can keep his party if he wants to, and if it means anything to him.”
President Mugabe said the appeal was wrongly directed to Dr Dabengwa.
“Of course that appeal was taken in a broader sense of meaning that I was appealing for Dabengwa and others to come back to Zanu-PF,” he said.
On the Unity Day celebrations the President reminded war veterans that they fought one war.
He said the two liberation movements, Zipra or Zanla, had a unity of purpose during the struggle that should be cherished by all. Dr Dabengwa acknowledged the President’s message and said he was going to consult his followers. Dr Dabengwa said Zapu members did not leave Zanu-PF as individuals but as a Zapu block, hence he could not make decisions on his own.
Senior Zanu-PF cadres, among them Cde Cephas Msipa and Dr Callistus Ndlovu, also implored former Zanu-PF members who left the party, including Dr Dabengwa, to come back and table their grievances within the revolutionary party saying their continued isolation was not helping the country.
Zanu and Zapu prosecuted the liberation war as one, though from two separate fronts. They concretised that unity when they fought as the Patriotic Front in the later years of the struggle.
The two liberation movements won the war and were part of the first democratically-elected unity government in 1980. They drifted apart from 1982 but came back together on December 22, 1987, when they signed the Unity Accord and a united Zanu-PF was formed.
PF-Zapu leader, Dr Nkomo became Vice-President and former Prime Minister, Cde Mugabe, became the Executive President.
Online Reporter